The Clements Center for Southwest Studies

and DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University
 

Announce a New Publication in the Library of Texas Series,
edited by David Farmer and David J. Weber

George Wilkins Kendall
Narrative of the Texan Santa Fe Expedition.  2 vols.
Edited by Gerald D. Saxon and William B. Taylor

Kendall’s Narrative of the Texan Santa Fe Expedition, originally published in two volumes by Harper and Brothers in 1844, is a classic of western Americana recounts the adventurers and suffering of a small group of Texans who set out across the plains in 1841 to seize neighboring New Mexico.  Operating under orders from the president of the Texas Republic, Mirabeau Lamar, the Texans were to take control of New Mexico through diplomacy or force.  Instead, the poorly provisioned party reached New Mexico in desperate straits after getting lost on the arid high plains.  Alerted to the Texans’ intentions, New Mexico officials sent a force to meet them. Rather than receiving the warm welcome they had expected, the Texans were persuaded to surrender, taken prisoner, and marched to Mexico City.  George Wilkins Kendall, the owner of a New Orleans newspaper, accompanied the Texans and shared their fate, but along the way he kept notes and sent dispatches to his newspaper that became the basis of his remarkable book.

Kendall’s Narrative of the Texan Santa Fe Expedition earned a wide readership.  It sold an astonishing 40,000 copies in its first eight years.  In 1856, Kendall revised it, adding new material.  The 1856 edition is the best and most coveted by scholars and collectors.  We have reproduced that edition in the Library of Texas, and been fortunate to have it expertly introduced and annotated by Gerald D. Saxon, Associate Director of Libraries, The University of Texas at Arlington, at the University of Texas at Arlington libraries and a specialist in Texas history of this era, and William B. Taylor, who holds the Muriel McKevitt Sonne Chair in History at the University of California, Berkeley, and is one of the nation’s leading historians of Mexico.  Our edition of the Narrative is handsomely designed by Bradley Hutchinson, printed on acid-free paper, and indexed.  No previous edition of Kendall’s book has appeared with an index, making ours by far the most useful as well as the most attractive.  We have printed 500 copies, of which 450 are for sale.  Our edition of Kendall cannot be purchased through retail bookshops.

Thanks to a generous grant from the Summerlee Foundation, we are able to offer the two volumes of Kendall’s Narrative for $75, plus applicable Texas sales tax and shipping. 

For details about ordering these books, please contact the Clements Center at (214) 768-3684 or swcenter@smu.edu.

ORDER FORM for Kendall's Narrative of the Texan Santa Fe Expedition:

Name:______________________________________________Phone/email:__________________________________

Address:____________________________________________City, State, Zip:________________________________

Number of copies: ______ x $75.00                                  = __________    
(Less 10% discount for subscribers)              

Applicable Texas sales tax per copy                                =  _________      

Postage: $7.00 for first copy, $3.00 for additional           =  _________      

TOTAL:                                                                                 =  _________      

 

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Last updated May 17, 2006.