Dreamer, optimist and visionary, Charles Dellschau (1830-1923) is one of the earliest documented self taught artists known in America. What began as an illustrated manuscript recounting his experiences in the California Gold Rush became an obsessive project resulting in twelve large, hand-bound books with more than 2500 drawings related to airships and the development of flight.

This first monograph on Dellschau includes an essay by the esteemed art writer the late Thomas McEvilley, texts by Roger Cardinal of the University of Kent, James Brett of the Museum of Everything in London, Tom Crouch of the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of Air and Space, president of the ABCD Art Brut collection in Paris Barbara Safarova and writer, poet and New York gallerist Randall Morris.