Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/590

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HISTORY OF OREGON LITERATURE

ments of research. While their familiar background gives them greater facility, it also gives them increasing standards of thoroughness, so that the work may be better done but there is not less of it. Take, for in stance, Lewis and Dryden's Marine History of the Pacific Northwest. It was compiled and edited by Edgar W. Wright, who for 20 years was commercial editor of the Oregonian. His labors and scant rewards have been described by Henry E. Reed as follows:

The marine history required visits by Mr. Wright to every navigation point in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and British Columbia, for the collection of data and photographs of men and vessels. The enterprise, Mr. Wright told me years ago, was not profitable either to the publishers or to the author. One main cause for the unfavorable result was that at the time of publication the United States was in a very serious business depression, following the panic of 1893. Mr. Wright lived to see copies of the history, with the binding in poor condition, sell for $25 and $50 asked for a copy in good binding.

Apparently there was a time when outside historians were looked upon with suspicion and discouragement. Mrs. Frances Fuller Victor tells how, when she arrived in Portland fresh from San Francisco, she went to see Judge Deady, who was not at all polite in his denunciation of her plan to write Oregon history, telling her that Oregon had suffered too much already from what he called itinerant historians. It has suffered some since, as is natural, but has benefited more, and the attitude now is one of complete hospitality and of appreciation of the advantages of the broader treatment by writers who connect up the history of this region with that of the country at large,