The Steam Man of the Prairies

Over at The Valve, John Holbo, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the National University of Singapore, discusses Edward Sylvester Ellis' classic dime novel The Huge Hunter or, The Steam Man of the Prairies (1868) including cover samples and story excerpts.

‘HOWLY vargin! what is that?’ exclaimed Mickey McSquizzle, with something like horrified amazement,

‘By the Jumping Jehosiphat, naow if that don’t, beat all natur’!’

‘It’s the divil, broke loose, wid full steam on!’

There was good cause for these exclamations upon the part of the Yankee and Irishman, as they stood on the margin of Wolf Ravine, and gazed off over the prairie. Several miles to the north, something like a gigantic man could be seen approaching, apparently at a rapid gait for a few seconds, when it slackened its speed, until it scarcely moved.

Occasionally it changed its course, so that it went nearly at right angles. At such times, its colossal proportions were brought out in full relief, looking like some Titan as it took its giant strides over the prairie.

The distance was too great to scrutinize the phenomenon closely; but they could see that a black volume of smoke issued either from its mouth or the top of its head, while it was drawing behind it a sort of carriage, in which a single man was seated, who appeared to control the movements of the extraordinary being in front of him.

No wonder that something like superstitious have filled the breasts of the two men who had ceased hunting for gold, for a few minutes, to view the singular apparition; for such a thing had scarcely been dreamed of at that day, by the most imaginative philosophers; much less had it ever entered the head of these two men on the western prairies.

‘Begorrah, but it’s the ould divil, hitched to his throttin ‘waging, wid his ould wife howlding the reins!’ exclaimed Mickey, who had scarcely removed his eyes from the singular object.

‘That there critter in the wagon is a man,’ said Hopkins, looking as intently in the same direction. ‘It seems to me,’ he added, a moment later, ‘that there’s somebody else a-sit-ting alongside of him, either a dog or a boy. Wal, naow, ain’t that queer?’

‘Begorrah! begorrah! do ye hear that? What shall we do?’

Holbo relates his own challenges in offering a definitive print edition.

Project Gutenberg, other places round the web, have free e-versions of his novel. But, on internal grounds, I suspect there are quality-control problems. [...] I bought a Kessinger reprint, hoping for guidance. I’ve bought Kessinger stuff before, and it’s worked out. They just scan old books. But this time they obviously just scooped and poured straight from Gutenberg. They didn’t even bother to format it. Bah. Anyway, to get even with that sort of shoddiness, I hauled off and made a Lulu version. Paperback. I’m claiming zero royalties. (I’m just messing about.) If you just want a free PDF, you are supposed to be able to download one for free. But I’m not seeing a download link at Lulu, even though I asked for that. So here you go. Go ahead, download a free e-book.

Now in an effort to further clean up the text, Holbo is looking for an old print edition of the book. He's offering a free copy of of Seven Soldiers of Victory, vol. 1 to the person who gets him a copy that enables Holbo to publish a definitive edition of The Huge Hunter or, The Steam Man of the Prairies, under the Creative Commons license. If a second person comes to his aid, Holbo has a copy of Stanley Cavell's The Claim of Reason to offer as well.