BIBLIOGRAPHY OF TEXAS 1795-1845. Part III.

By Thomas W. Streeter '04.Cambridge: Harvard University Press,1960. 2 vols. $25.00.

"My interest in Texas," writes Mr. Streeter in his introduction, "began with a business visit there in the spring of 1913 after examining oil properties in Mexico. As these visits to Texas continued, and as I gradually became somewhat familiar with its history, I became more and more fascinated with the flowering in the short period of fifty years of a little known, remote, sparsely settled Spanish province into the thriving Republic of Texas, and with the great events of that period; the colonization of Texas by Americans under the leadership of Stephen F. Austin, the drama of the Texas Revolution, and the many-sided struggle ending with annexation by the United States.

"The history of the Texas region for this fifty-year period beginning in 1795 seemed to me more colorful and glamorous than any fifty-year period of any of our states, except perhaps Massachusetts from 1620 to 1670, and to constitute an important part of the general history of the entire United States. I then began in a modest way to collect books relating to Texas."

It was in 1927 that Mr. Streeter in, as he now declares, "the valor of ignorance" started to gather material and to make notes for a bibliography. During "the nearly two-and-a-half decades since then the work has gone on, fitted in as opportunity permitted in an active business life and, later, vying for attention with the author's other substantial collecting interests in the broad area of historical Americana.

Part I of the Bibliography was. issued in 1955 in two volumes and was immediately hailed - with much more precision than the term is sometimes applied - as a "monumental work." In this first part, devoted to "Texas Imprints," nearly seven hundred printed items (books, broadsides, folders, and maps) were recorded and described. Part II, treating in one volume the muchneglected field of "Mexican Imprints Relating to Texas," appeared in 1956.

The present volumes constitute the third, and final, part of the Bibliography, bringing the work to its climax with attention to "United States and European Imprints Relating to Texas" during the period 1795-1845. Like their predecessors, these volumes reflect not only the industry of the compiler, but also the breadth and depth of his knowledge of the subject and the meticulous nature of his scholarship.

It may be said of the entire five volumes, as was commented on the appearance of Part I, that Mr. Streeter's Bibliography ofTexas "is almost as much a history as it is a bibliography, so great is the wealth of information provided." The notes that accompany the entries are always clear and helpful, and frequently contain a truly astounding amount of pertinent data about the publications to which they relate.