Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52

Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe was born in 1819 in New Jersey and grew up in Massachusetts. She travelled to California with her husband, a physician, who worked in the mining camps of the Feather River region. During her stay she wrote a series of letters to her sister Mary, which were published in a San Francisco magazine in 1854 and 1855 under the pen name Dame Shirley. They were later collected as a book, and the edition recorded here is dated 1922.

The letters are valued for two reasons. They are a rare record by a woman of the Gold Rush, a world usually described by men, and they are also well written. Clappe has a keen eye for people and an ear for how they speak, and she can be funny and moving within the same page. Historians have turned to her letters for details of daily life, while readers of literature have admired their style.

This audiobook has twenty-four sections, including an introduction, and runs for roughly six hours. It is read by one LibriVox volunteer. If you enjoy travel writing, American history or simply a distinctive narrator’s voice from the nineteenth century, these letters offer a vivid trip back to a rough and remarkable time.

One of the pleasures of letters as a form is their immediacy. Clappe writes as events unfold, often by candlelight, and she sometimes breaks off to describe a noise outside or the arrival of a visitor. You feel that you are sitting beside her in a small cabin, listening to the rain on the roof.