A Northern Christmas

by Rockwell Kent

Overview

<P>First published in 1941, A Northern Christmas is Rockwell Kent's uplifting account of the 1918 Christmas he spent with his 9-year old son in a one-room, moss-caulked log cabin on a remote Alaskan Island. Published here in its original format, with Kent's striking illustrations, this charming keepsake edition is sure to delight a new generation of readers.</P>

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780819572066
Publisher:	Wesleyan University Press
Publication date:	01/01/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	40
Sales rank:	1,004,172
File size:	5 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

<P>ROCKWELL KENT (1872-1971) was one of America's most celebrated graphic artists. Although he is perhaps best known for his illustrations for The Complete Works of William Shakespeare and Moby Dick, his artwork appeared everywhere at the height of his career. Kent also created the "random house" that, despite revision throughout the years, has been the colophon of that company since its inception in 1928. Kent's other travel books include N by E, Wilderness, and Voyaging, all reissued by Wesleyan University Press, a tribute to their perennial appeal. DOUG CAPRA came to Alaska in 1971 and taught school in the Aleutian Islands, in Seward, and at Kenai Peninsula College. He retired after twenty-four years, and then spent seventeen years as a seasonal and permanent ranger at Kenai Fjords National Park. Capra has served on the board of the Alaska Historical Society and written extensively about Alaska history, including three books, several forewords, and many articles about Rockwell Kent published in The Kent Collector. He has spent many years wandering Fox Island and Resurrection Bay to learn more about Kent's experience. Capra's book, The Spaces Between: Stories from the Kenai Mountains to the Kenai Fjords, includes two chapters about Kent. He has written and directed two plays, And Now the World Again, about Rockwell Kent; and Into Alaska a Woman Came, about a pioneer woman called Alaska Nellie. He has written the forewords for two of Kent's books published by the Wesleyan University Press—Wilderness: A Journal of Quiet Adventure in Alaska; and Northern Christmas. He lives in Seward, only twelve miles from Fox Island, and occasionally works as a naturalist aboard cruise ships.</P>

Read an Excerpt

We've cleaned the house, stowed everything away upon shelves and hooks and in corners; moved even my easel aside; decorated the roof timbers with dense hemlock boughs, stowed quantities of wood behind the stove -- for there must be no work on that holiday -- and now both Rockwell and I are in a state of suppressed excitement over tomorrow.

What a strange thing! Nothing is coming to us, no change in any respect in the routine of our lives but what we make ourselves, -- and yet the day looms so large and magnificent before us! I suppose the greatest festivals of our lives are those at which we dance ourselves . . . This is the true Christmas land. The day should be dark, the house further overshadowed by the woods, tall and black. And there in the midst of that somber, dreadful gloom the Christmas tree should blaze in glory unrivaled by moon or sun or star.