1911 "The Winning Of Barbara Worth" Harold Bell Wright

Wright's early novels extol the superiority of country people over urban people. When he turns to the great open spaces of the West, he transfers this idea to the rugged individualists and to the West as Mecca. Showing a continued interest in humanity, Wright presents conflicts between East and West, country and city, and experience and education. The characters represent these conflicts as the urban, educated man is pitted against the natural, rural man. Either the latter wins, or the urban male is converted to the nature of the West. This novel demonstrates Wright's southwestern expertise, for when he moved to Southern California and, later, Arizona for his health, he became aware of the culture, geography, and industry of that region. His expertise is easily recognizable in later books.

When Harold Bell Wright left the pastoral ministry in late 1907 he established a farm near El Centro, in the Imperial Valley, the southeast corner of the state of California. Here Wright wrote The Winning of Barbara Worth, the best selling book of his career. It was also Harold Bell Wright's only historical novel, telling in great detail the story of the "reclamation" of the lower California desert. What is now Imperial County, California, was once the eastern part-- the "barren desert" part--of San Diego county. Much of Imperial County lies below sea level and below the mighty Colorado River which divides Imperial County from Arizona. In 1901 pioneers cut an opening in the west bank of the Colorado River and began building canals through the sandy soil to carry water to the desert. In 1905 the main canal gate washed out and the entire Colorado river was diverted from the Gulf of Mexico to the dead-end basin of the Imperial Valley, now known as the Salton Sea. Many books have been written about the heroic efforts to turn that river back to its natural course. If the two-year effort had failed, as it very nearly did, the entire basin would today be under salty water. Harold Bell Wright arrived in the area very shortly after the river was restored to its original course and the valley was saved.

Though The Winning of Barbara Worth is fiction, Wright's record of details of life in then-San Diego County, is hard to match elsewhere. A good example is his description, in the first two chapters, of travel from San Diego to Yuma--one of the most spectacular and difficult routes in the United States at that time. The climax of the story features another detailed description of the two men who contended for Barbara's hand racing on horseback over the same route to San Diego and back. Since the fictional Barbara Worth was probably about 20 years of age when the Colorado broke it banks in 1905, that description should be of the trip in the middle 1880's. But of course Wright described the route as he experienced it from about 1907 to 1911 when the book was published. Actually, the route changed little during the 30 years before the book was published--though the road changed from a horse trail to a wagon road during that time--so the differences are minor.

Second photo shows the title page and attractive frontispiece, which is just one of the several F. Graham Cootes illustrations within.

The cover shows some wear and edge frays, but all the pages are intact, and there are no inscriptions.

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