Nine Pounds Of Luggage

MAUD PARRISH

Publication: J B Lippincott Company, 1939, Philadelphia

First edition. 8vo. Burnt orange cloth, titles and small front cover design in dark green, 400 pp., publisher's foreword, preface, illustrated. Illustrations by Robert S. Robison. This exceedingly scarce and rousing memoir by a former Alaska-Klondike gold rush "Saloon Girl," a California teenager forced to marry at 16, lost a child, and after being denied a divorce during a riotous hearing in which nearly all the participants were involved on both sides, left town with her banjo and pluck for Seattle. There she met some women who were off to Dawson to set up a saloon, and with her effervescent personality she became one of the most popular. From there she went to work as a saloon girl & entertainer in Nome, offering a colorful "picture of what it was like for a woman making her way as an entertainer among the teeming population of the stampede." Parrish (1878-1976) followed up her Gold Rush stampede adventures by traveling the World, operating a gambling house in Beijing during the closing years of the Empress Dowager Cixi’s reign, roamed Japan, South America, traveled as a hobo across the U.S., followed by time in Hong Kong, Singapore, India, Indonesia, Haiti, and even for a time in Hitler's Nazi-controlled Germany prior to World War II. Kurutz says "The vast majority of this autobiography chronicles her global adventures, but the parts about her time in the Klondike and Nome nonetheless provide a colorful picture of what it was like for a woman making her way as an entertainer among the teeming population of the stampede." Former owner's inked name at the top of the front pastedown sheet and colorful and neat bookplate on the front free fly leaf, else a very good copy in a colorful bright dust jacket with light wear to the spine ends and corners. A delightful and enjoyable read.