THREE YEARS IN CHILE. BY MRS.
GEORGE G. MERWIN. Edited with an
introduction by C. Harvey Gardiner.
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univer-
sity Press, 1966. xviii+102p. $4.50.)
Not widely recognized for what it
really is, an interesting early Ohio book
has been published as the fourth in a
valuable series of "Latin American Travel"
reprints. The book is presented as a New
York publication of Follett, Foster & Com-
pany in 1863, and the editor neither men-
tions the fact that it first came out two
years earlier (1861) in Columbus, Ohio
under the title, Three Years in Chili. By
a Lady of Ohio, nor that the labor of shap-
ing the author's amateurish composition
into very readable printer's copy was per-
formed by young William Dean Howells.
In 1860, finding his editorial post on the
Ohio State Journal temporarily closed out,
Howells turned to various kinds of piece-
work offered by his friend Frank Foster,
a partner in the prospering Columbus pub-
lishing firm mentioned above that had not
yet moved to New York. Howells redid
the anonymous memoirs from Chile either
that spring or the following fall.
The little narrative is quite appealing
in its newly revised form. The editor has
refashioned chapter heads, redone Spanish
that the author knew not at all, both cor-
rected and modernized punctuation and
spelling (e.g., Chili), and furnished a
succinct and adequate introduction.
The author was Loretta L. Merwin
(Mrs. George B.), daughter of Reuben
Wood, who had been chief justice of the
Ohio Supreme Court and, from 1851 till
1853, Democratic governor. Wood had
resigned from the bench in 1853 to accept
an appointment as consul, later minister
to Valparaiso, Chile. Soon bored and disil-
lusioned by his isolated assignment, he
returned to Ohio the next year, naming
his son-in-law George B. Merwin his vice-
consul. Hence the presence of the Merwins
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