This web site provides detailed bibliographic, publishing, and price information on books and pamphlets written about the Lost Dutchman Mine and related topics. Additional information and my comments on these works and authors are also presented. My hope is that this information will be of interest to fellow book collectors and Lost Dutchman aficionados. I want to stress that even though detailed bibliographic information is presented, this does not compete with extensive bibliographies by Kollenborn, Davis, Sikorsky, Probert, and Conatser, all of which I highly recommend.
The heart of this web site is Core Works. Here are listed books and pamphlets whose focus is exclusively on either Jacob Waltz, the Lost Dutchman Mine, or Superstition Mountain. These three themes and these works comprise the canon for the Lost Dutchman tale, a canon nourished by many fascinating disputes over the last seventy years. Note that I don't list or comment upon newspaper or magazine articles nor the multitude of general lost mine and treasure books (again see, Kollenborn, Davis, Sikorsky, Probert, and Conatser).
There is more here than just core works, however. Many other books and pamphlets are listed and described that bear some (often tenuous) relationship to the three major themes. Some are important, you don't want to miss them, others just interesting. They are found in related works, fiction and poetry, juvenile or young adult fiction, western fiction, art and maps. A publishing chronology is also provided, as is a list of interesting links. Don't overlook postcards and artists.
In the records that follow I list original price first, when known, then any current price(s) I have seen for this work over the last five years. For example, $1.50/ $5.00 means the original price was $1.50 and a recent price for a copy was $5.00. So, $1.50/ $5.00, $6.00 means I saw two copies for sale, one that cost $5.00, the other $6.00. The original price when listed is almost always taken from the book or pamphlet itself, though in some cases it was found in Cumulative Book Index (CBI) or Books in Print (BIP). In some records information used is from the OCLC database (OCLC). When a "?" is used it means that I do not know the original price, or that I have not found one for sale. In most cases, items for sale were in good or very good condition, though not always. A collector of these works will soon find that many are far too rare to quibble much over condition - be glad you found one for sale. Some works will have SMHS with the price, for example, $2.50/SMHS, in these cases SMHS stands for the Superstition Mountain Historical Society and the price listed is the one I paid for their reprint. SMHS offers a number of reprints of classic works in the Lost Dutchman genre (see Superstition Mountain/Lost Dutchman Museum). Since the originals of these works are often expensive and difficult to obtain this reasonably priced reprint series is a boon to collectors and students of Lost Dutchman lore.
For the books and pamphlets listed in Core Works I include links to Notes and Comments. For the other chapters any notes or comments I may have are presented with the bibliographic and publishing information. In making these notes and comments I may remark on just about anything that strikes my fancy, offering everything from a serious assessment of a work to just sharing my amusement at its wonderful eccentricity. Often, I note at least something about content and frequently I have something to say about the quality of the writing, the graphics, or the book's production. I don't intend to be heavy-handed. Only a few of these works can be judged fairly if they are held up to more normal standards of writing and exposition, or worse, to common standards of argument and proof. Many of these books are the work of a lifetime for their authors, dedicated Lost Dutchman seekers one and all, so there is no reason to view them too critically. They are to be enjoyed for what they are. In some comments "RB" appears. This denotes a quotation taken from Robert Blair's book. "CM" denotes comments taken from Estee Conatser and Karl von Mueller's work. "GD" refers to information that Greg Davis furnished.
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core works related fiction westerns juvenile art/artists maps chronology intro postcards other sites |
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Doug Stewart. © 1994-2004.