Baddeck and that sort of thing (Paperback) | Released: 08 Jul 2015

NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH MASS PRODUCED COPIES OF "BADDECK & THAT SORT OF THING" this unique book, available only in quality paperback format, has the subtitle "The Book that Brought Alexander Graham Bell to Baddeck". It is an enhanced version, superior in content and quality, and contains the total original text of the 1874 bestselling travelogue written by Charles Dudley Warner PLUS added illustrations, photos, reviews & much carefully researched information. An additional bonus is the foreword, written by Alexander Graham Bell's great grandson Hugh Bell Muller. The original 1874 edition was responsible for Alexander Graham Bell coming to Baddeck, Nova Scotia for the first time in 1885. It was just 9 years after the telephone was patented and the young inventor and his wife, Mabel Hubbard Bell were looking for a place to get away from the unwanted attention his fame was bringing where they lived in Washington, D.C. Warner's description of the peaceful Scottish village intrigued the Bells and they serendipitously arrived in Baddeck to see for themselves. Falling in love with the Village of Baddeck and the Island of Cape Breton, they proceeded to establish a second home there. Named Beinn Bhreagh (Beautiful Mountain in Scottish Gaelic) it grew to an estate of 450 acres and was a beehive of activity over the next 37 years. The telephone was just the first of Bell's innovative accomplishments. Before he died in Baddeck in 1922 at age 75, he and his associates achieved many other successes - two of which were the first powered flight in Canada by the Silver Dart in 1909; the fastest boat in the world, his hydrofoil, the HD-4 in 1919. He and his wife are buried on the mountaintop of their estate, Beinn Bhreagh, which is still used and maintained by the Bell family descendants. Baddeck is now the site of a world class museum, the Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site, run by Parks Canada. The publishers, Deja Vu Press, have gathered a fascinating collection of related pieces - relevant photographs to enhance the original publication, notes on Warner and Twichell's comments and experiences while in Baddeck; reviews of Dudley's book from the days when it was a best seller; a follow up article written 20 years later by famed author and editor, William Webster Ellsworth; numerous Publisher's notes; and a new introduction. Foreword author Hugh Bell Muller, Alexander Graham Bell's great grandson, lives in retirement with his wife Jeanne at Beinn Bhreagh. As with many of Bell's descendants, they are actively involved in the community, especially the museum. It is a simple fact to state, that, as result of reading Warner's "Baddeck and that sort of thing", the Bells' influence changed Baddeck forever and put its name in the history books.
About the Author: Charles Dudley Warner: The American essayist & novelist Charles Dudley Warner was born in Plainfield, Massachusetts, but from his sixth to his fourteenth year he lived in Charlemont, MA, the scene of the experiences pictured in his delightful study of childhood, "Being a Boy" (1877). In 1851 he graduated from Hamilton College, Clinton, N.Y. He worked with a surveying party in Missouri; studied law at the University of Pennsylvania; practiced in Chicago (1856-60); was assistant editor (1860) and editor (1861- 1867) of The Hartford Press, and after The Press was merged into The Hartford Courant, was co-editor with Joseph R. Hawley; in 1884 he joined the editorial staff of Harper's Magazine, for which he conducted "The Editor's Drawer" until 1892, at which time he took charge of "The Editor's Study". He travelled widely, lectured frequently, and was actively interested in prison reform, city park supervision and other movements for the public good. He was the first president of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and, at the time of his death on October 20, 1900 in Hartford, Connecticut, was president of the American Social Science Association. He was a friend and collaborator of Mark Twain ("The Gilded Age") and first attracted attention by the reflective sketches entitled "My Summer in a Garden"(1870; first published in The Hartford Courant), popular for their abounding and refined humor and mellow personal charm, their wholesome love of outdoor things, their suggestive comment on life and affairs, and their delicately finished style, qualities suggesting the work of Washington Irving.