Raincoast Chronicles First Five; Collector's Edition - Stories and History of the B.C. Coast

Madeira Park, British Columbia: arbour Publishing. Hardcover. In exceptionally good condition/No Dust Jacket. Demy folio, [27.75cm/11inches], full gilt-embossed orchrè-coloured cloth sans dust jacket, pp. 270. Illustrated with b-w halftones, &tc.. Please feel free to ask for particulars and/or additional photographs. ... Founded by Howard and Mary White, a couple of novice publishers from Pender Harbour, in 1972, Raincoast Chronicles set out to put the character of our coast “on the record.” The “unclassifiable journal-cum-serial-book”, born into an era of rococo flourishes and sepia ink, not only invented the term “Raincoast”, but defined the identity of the people who settled on its furthest crags and outcrops through stories, poems, and recipes. Meanwhile, Chronicles helped establish Harbour as a regional publishing force. As the writers of the articles graduated to books, so did the Whites, and Harbour grew to become an award-winning independent book publisher. In his introduction at the start of the commemorative edition, Howard White describes the “atavistic” conditions in which the imprint came about. But, since buying that first finicky old printing press, Harbour Publishing has put out 23 Raincoast anthologies and roughly 600 books on every aspect of the West Coast lifestyle, with titles like A Dictionary of Chinook Jargon, Build Your Own Floor Loom, The Encyclopedia of British Columbia, and Now You’re Logging.