George Wharton James

George Wharton James
File:Portrait of the photographer George Wharton James, ca.1890-1905 (CHS-3994).jpg
Born	27 September 1858 Lincolnshire, England
Died	1923
Occupation	lecturer, photographer, journalist
Subject	California and the American Southwest

George Wharton James (27 September 1858 – 1923) was a prolific popular lecturer, photographer and journalist, writing more than 40 books and many articles and pamphlets on California and the American Southwest.

Biography

James was born in Lincolnshire, England. He was ordained as a Methodist minister and came to the United States in 1881, serving in parishes in Nevada and southern California. However, in 1889 he was sued for divorce, accused by his wife with committing numerous acts of adultery. He subsequently underwent an ecclesiastical trial, charged with real estate fraud, using faked credentials, and sexual misconduct. He was defrocked, although he was later reinstated. He had a long-running feud with Charles Fletcher Lummis, another writer with similar regional interests.

James' books included the well-received The Wonders of the Colorado Desert (1906), Through Ramona's Country (1909), In and Out of the Old Missions of California (1905), and The Lake of the Sky (1915). Characteristics of his writing included romanticism, an enthusiasm for natural environments, idealization of aboriginal lifeways, and health faddism. He was associate editor of The Craftsman (1904–05), editor of Out West (1912–14), and lectured at the Panama-Pacific and Panama-California expositions 1915–16.

In Pasadena, James lived with his second wife at 1098 North Raymond Avenue which, according to Lawrence Clark Powell, "became a kind of museum salon in the same way that El Alisal served as the center for his rival booster Lummis' Los Angeles followers. He also created the Pasadena Browning Society as well as the Anti-Whispering Society. According to Powell, the Anti-Whispering Society was "devoted to the suppression of (1) talking audiences, (2) peanut fiends, and (3) crying babies."

The California State Library and the University of California, Berkeley have collections of James' books and pamphlets. A collection of his photographs is on file at the University of New Mexico. The Southwest Museum in Los Angeles also has some of his papers and photographs.

Bibliography

File:George Wharton James.jpg

George Wharton James in his workshop.

• LCC F868.S15 J2 (with illustrations by Carl Eytel)

References

• Bourdon, Roger Joseph (1966). George Wharton James, Interpreter of the Southwest. Los Angeles, CA: University of California, Los Angeles. Ph.D. thesis. pp. 375. OCLC 28143279, 32290472 and 52598780
• LCC F865.J35 L37 1991
• Starr, Kevin (1973 and 1986). Americans and the California Dream, 1850–1915. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. pp. 494. ISBN 978-0195016444 (1986) OCLC 641725018 and 254930084
• OCLC 754890912 and 22357424

External links

• Works by George Wharton James at Project Gutenberg
• Works by George Wharton James at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• "An Adventure in Beaver Canyon 1899" at the Wayback Machine (archived October 28, 2009)
• "Basket Makers," Sunset 8(1) (1901)
• "A Saboba Origin-Myth" (1902)
• "The Legend of Tauquich and Algoot" (1903)
• The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It at the Wayback Machine (archived October 28, 2009) (1910)
• The Old Franciscan Missions Of California by George Wharton James at Project Gutenberg (1913)
• George Wharton James at Find a Grave