This work surveys Edwin Dickinson's life and career, both of which revolved around Cape Cod, Buffalo, and New York's Finger Lakes region. It covers the artist's influential career as a teacher, and analyzes Dickinson's self-portraits and major symbolic paintings.

The biographical material formerly included in the directory is issued separately as Who's who in American art, 1936/37-

"Should be the classic, central, definitive work on the emergence of Bay Area Figurative painting."--Paul Mills, author of The New Figurative Painting of David Park

Includes report of the director of fine arts, of the director of the Museum, and of the director of the Technical schools.

Collects the best artwork created before, during and following the Civil War, in the years between 1859 and 1876, along with extensive quotations from men and women alive during the war years and text by literary figures, including Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain and Walt Whitman. 15,000 first printing.