Crisis in the Catskills

A signed copy of Mary Bogardus's historical novel about the Anti-Rent War of 1844-45 in Delaware County, New York — inscribed on the half-title page in the author's hand. The inscription reads: "To a little understanding / Bear Closed his/her" — a personal dedication from a writer born in Margaretville, just up the road, who spent years in intensive research into the Delaware County Historical Society's records to reconstruct this mostly forgotten chapter of New York history.

The Anti-Rent War is one of the most consequential and least-remembered events in upstate New York's past: tenant farmers, trapped under feudal land agreements that ran in perpetuity, rising in armed resistance against landlords and the state, disguised as "Indians" in calico masks and leathers, signaling with conch-shell horns at night. Bogardus builds her novel around the real history with fidelity to landscape and period. The endpapers carry a detailed map of Delaware County as it was in 1845, showing roads, farms, and the stagecoach routes.

Published by Hope Farm Press, Cornwallville, New York, 1976 — this is the limited Bicentennial Edition, one of 94 printings. Dust jacket present with some wear; red boards clean. Original copyright 1960 by Mary Elizabeth Bogardus.