author
Felix Paul Wierzbicki
1815–1860
A Polish-born physician, soldier, and traveler, he wrote one of the earliest and most vivid book-length accounts of Gold Rush California. His work captures the region at the very moment it was changing the world.
1 Audiobook
California as it is, and as it may be : or, A guide to the gold region
by Felix Paul Wierzbicki
About the author
After taking part in the failed Polish November Uprising of 1830–1831, he eventually made his way to the United States, studied medicine, and later traveled west. His life crossed several worlds at once: exile, military service, medical practice, and frontier writing.
He is best remembered for California as It Is, and as It May Be; or, A Guide to the Gold Region (1849), widely noted as the first original English-language book printed in California. Part guidebook and part firsthand observation, it offered early readers a practical and lively picture of the Gold Rush country just as interest in California was exploding.
Beyond his writing, he practiced as a physician in San Francisco and became part of the young state's early civic and intellectual life. Though he died in 1860, his name endures through that remarkable snapshot of California at the start of its modern history.