Dolly Varden

[San Francisco]: Bruce's Print, n.d., ca. 1870s. First Edition. Small broadside (16x8.5cm.) printed within typographically decorative border on yellow stock. Miniscule loss at top left-hand margin, else Near Fine. Printed at head of title "8 & 7." Reconstruction-era three verse ballad broadside addressed to Dolly Varden (not /the/ Dolly Varden of Charles Dickens' novel "Barnaby Rudge," though the name was hugely popular as a result of the work, and inspired a fashion craze and the name of a trout). The text makes mention of the 1872 Crédit Mobilier fraud; promotes the work of the Patrons of Husbandry ("Dolly, do you love the 'Granges,' / Do you love to be well fed, / Will you shield them from all danger, / While they reap the daily bread?"); and attacks the spread of carpet-bagging in the South ("Search the carpet-bagger well, / And the pack of high-tone stealers, / Judge, and send them all to L. (Inventory #: 48786)