[Rarebooks] fa: AFRICAN HUNTING FROM NATAL TO THE ZAMBESI - William Charles Butler - First Edition 1863

[ArCh]

Auction ends Sunday, April 9. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

https://tinyurl.com/4aza4u85

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


William Charles Baldwin: African Hunting from Natal to the Zambesi : Including Lake Ngami, the Kalahari Desert, &c. from 1852 to 1860... With illustrations by James Wolf and J.B. Zwecker. London: Richard Bentley, 1863. First edition; 8vo (22.5 cm) in original publisher's pebbled green cloth, lettered and decorated in gilt; x, 451, [1], 32 pp.; with the publisher's catalogue, frontispiece, folding map of South Africa, numerous black&white in-text illustrations and plates as listed, plus 6 colored lithographs (complete).

An important work on big game hunting and African travel, rather uncommon as a first edition in the original binding. "Mr Baldwin penetrated through Natal, Zululand, the Transvaal, Bechuanaland, Matabeleland, and Namaqualand, in days when some of these countries were hardly known even by name, and he was the second European to reach the falls of the Zambesi River, now famous as the Victoria Falls... He went through more adventures than almost all of the great South African travelers and hunters" (Mendelssohn: South African Bibliography). Baldwin's lively account, "written in a simple and unostentatious manner," is accompanied by many vivid illustrations of sporting slaughter (Shot a Hippopotamus, Hunting Baboons, Killing Snakes, Lion Shot, etc.) and occasionally, of payback (Chased by infuriated Buffalo, Knocked from a Hut by a Lioness, Chased up and down Hill by Elephant, etc.).

Binding with some rubbing, wear to the joints, edges and extremities, now protected in a mylar jacket; contents with mild even toning to the leaves, some scattered foxing (but less than is often found in this title), closed tear to the margin of one plate, earlier owner's discreet signature to the front paste-down, else clean and sound, firmly bound. Front paste-down with the small original bookseller's label of William Potter, Liverpool.