Gathers accounts by Audubon, Whitman, Stevenson, Crane, and others Buchholz, coauthor of Great Storms of the Jersey Shore, has collected reflections on the New Jersey shoreline from diaries, letters, and magazine and newspaper articles. The 50 entries span 1764 through 1955, the year the Garden State Parkway opened. While the coastline has changed both geographically and demographically, the lure of the shore has not. The chroniclers include the famous (e.g., Stephen Crane, Robert Louis Stevenson, and John James Audubon), unknown wide-eyed vacationers, and writers on assignment from newspapers. It is particularly interesting to read different accounts of the same place, such as Walt Whitman's and Arthur Conan Doyle's descriptions of Atlantic City. Throughout, the entries remain as fresh as a sea breeze. This book is a fine chronicle of the development and discovery of the pleasures of the shore. A wonderful resource for regional collections; recommended for both public and academic libraries.AThomas O'Connell, Murray State Univ. Lib., KY Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. "...glimpses of 'everyday life', as manners and mores evolve over the decades, make Shore Chronicles a real eye-opener." -- Booklist, American Library Association "The book is for those who can't get enough of the shore and want to soak it up for 10 generations back..." -- The SandPaper, Long Beach Island, NJ, July 21, 1999 "fascinating..." -- Atlantic City Magazine, August 1999 Shore Chronicles joins two other acclaimed Jersey Shore anthologies published by Down The Shore Publishing - Shore Stories: An Anthology of the Jersey Shore, a collection of contemporary writing, and Under A Gull's Wing: Poems and Photographs of the Jersey Shore - in a trilogy of extraordinary writing about this region. For millions of people, summer means traveling to the Jersey Shore. Every generation brings a different outlook and a new sense of discovery to this beloved region. Shore Chronicles, a collection of 50 accounts of shore visits between 1764 and 1955, begins with adventure travel by stagecoach, when the shore was still a wild frontier. It concludes with the opening of the Garden State Parkway, which brought about rapid change and growth. In the two centuries between, we read of an auction of goods from an 1828 shipwreck on Long Beach Island; we experience traveling by steamship from Philadelphia to Cape May in 1848; we find teenagers on Tuckers Island in 1809 innocently gathering now-threatened Piping Plover eggs for egg nog; we watch a dawn-to-dusk, continuous line of migrating birds over Barnegat Bay in the fall of 1864; we visit the elegant, opulent resort of Long Branch in the late 1800s; and we discover the "fantastic" architecture of Atlantic City in 1914. Shore Chronicles is an enlightening historical perspective on pleasures and pastimes that are timeless. For, in spite of great changes to the landscape, we connect with our predecessors - who write here of breathtaking sea and sky vistas, of "sea bathing," of a bluefish blitz, of storms and erosion, amusements, boardwalks, and lifeguards. The book reveals a much loved coast that has seen remarkable change, yet still holds an appeal as powerful as ever. Shore Chronicles is a remarkable collection of 50 personal accounts of visits to the Jersey Shore between 1764 and 1955. The book includes writing by such well-known figures as John J. Audubon, Walt Whitman, Robert Louis Stevenson, Stephen Crane and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. But it also presents fascinating selections from private journals, letters, and diaries of others visiting the shore - ordinary people with extraordinary impressions of their travels along this exceptional 127-mile-long coastline. Margaret Thomas Buchholz, who researched and edited the material in this collection, is a resident of Long Beach Island and co-author, with Larry Savadove, of Great Storms of the Jersey Shore (1993, Down The Shore Publishing). A foreword from renowned New Jersey historian John T. Cunningham opens the book with his own reflections about this celebrated shore. (the following are abbreviated from chapter-length accounts) 1879, ATLANTIC CITY: I have a fine and bracing drive along the smooth sand (the carriage wheels hardly made a dent in it). The bright sun, the sparkling waves, the foam, the view - Brigantine beach, a sail here and there in the distance - the ragged wreck-timbers of the stranded Rockaway - the vital, vast monotonous sea - all the fascination of simple, uninterrupted space, shore, salt atmosphere, sky, were the items of my drive. - Walt Whitman 1892, ASBURY PARK: On the lake shore is an "observation wheel," which is the name of a gigantic upright wheel of wood and steel, which goes around carrying little cars filled with maniacs, up and down, over and over. - Stephen Crane 1892, WILDWOOD: That I am at last in a bit of Jersey's primeval forest there is little doubt. Everywhere towering trees bearing evidence of gr