Wilderness Man. The Strange Story of Grey Owl

Canada: Macmillan of Canada, 1973. Hardback. First Edition. Slightly sunned top edge of cloth. Wear and tear to D/J. His mission was to defent the countryside from exploitation, the Indians against the humiliations so often accorded them, and animals from cruelty and slaughter. Still Grey Owl was no saint, and beyond the exotic myth was a strange story. His real name was Archie Belaney, and at the age of eighteen he had left England from the Canadian northland, the land of his dreams. In the romantic pursuit of a vanishing reality, he adopted Indian dress and ways, and became a man of the wilderness. Archie turned his back on his past, invented a new one, and was ggiven the name Grey Owl. Then Grey Owl fell in love with a young beuatiful Iroquois girl, Anahareo, who was to be the heroine of his most famous book, Pilgrims of the Wild. Out of love for Anahareo, Grey Owl gave up trapping and turned to protectiving animlas. His books and talks, immensely popular, appealed not only to man's better nature, but to his hopes and dreams. When Grey Owl died in 1938, the truth about his past came out and the controversy was on. He was not part Indian. But did it really matter? The essential things were sincere - the man, and his message. And the myth itself proved too powerful to die.Illustrated. 283 pp. (We carry a wide selection of titles in The Arts, Theology, History, Politics, Social and Physical Sciences. academic and scholarly books and Modern First Editions etc.) . First Edition. Cloth. Very Good/Fair. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. Hadrback.