SIGNED. Seashore Animals of the Pacific Coast

New York: The Macmillan Co., 1927. First edition, first printing.

SIGNED FIRST PRINTING OF "INDISPENSABLE" ILLUSTRATED GUIDE TO PACIFIC COAST INVERTEBRATES AUTHORED BY PIONEERING FEMALE BIOLOGIST.

15 x 24 x 5 cm hardcover, decorative title and gilt embossed snail shell emblem to cover, gilt title and embossed snail to spine, ink signature and address label of Gilbert R. Van de Water to front paste-down, front free endpaper with his embossed name & address to bottom and pencil signature of Anne S. Culbertson top of front free endpaper, color frontispiece of marine invertebrates with tissue guard, title page with signature of Myrtle E. Johnson, i-xiv, 659 pp, 700 figures in text, 11 color plates with facing tissue guards containing descriptive text. Minimal wear to corners and spine ends, very good+ copy in custom archival mylar cover.

MYRTLE ELIZABETH JOHNSON (1881 -1967) was an American marine biologist, ascidiologist, and educator in California in the early 20th century. She was the first woman PhD faculty member at the San Diego State College (now San Diego State University), where she taught from 1921 to 1946, and was chair of the Biology department from 1928 to 1940. Johnson received her B.S. in Math and Zoology in 1908, and an M.S. in zoology (with a secondary teaching credential) in 1909. She worked as a research assistant to William Ritter at the Marine Biological Association in La Jolla (1 909-1910) before continuing post- graduate study in Zoology, working with Dr. Harry Beal Torrey. Professor Ritter named an ascidian in her honor in 1909 for her excellent detailed scientific illustration of a particular ascidian. She received her PhD (Zoology) in 1912. While working as a high school biology teacher in Pasadena (1912-1921 ), Johnson began work (1915) on a study of intertidal species with another Pasadena high school biologist, HARRY JAMES SNOOK. They continued to work on the text after Johnson joined the faculty of San Diego State College in 1921. Johnson and Snook's Seashore Animals of the Pacific Coast (offered here) was first published in 1927, with a total of 4 printings (1927, 1935, 1955, 1967), and was the standard descriptive text of intertidal species until Ed Ricketts's Between Pacific Tides was published in 1939. Ricketts considered Johnson's book "the vade mecum of marine biologists of the Pacific. Indispensable." She was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.