The Rest of Africa

$1,995 -- Through the Dark Continent by Henry Morton Stanley

An unusually nice set, internally near pristine. Lack of foxing is very rare for the London editions.

First edition, 2 volumes, 8vo., xiv, [1], 522; ix, 566 pp., 2 frontispiece portraits, 10 maps including 2 large folding maps in pockets at rear, 33 wood-engraved plates, illustrations in the text, original brown pictorial cloth.

In 1874, the New York Herald and the Daily Telegraph financed Stanley on another expedition to Africa. Stanley's ambitious objective was to complete the exploration and mapping of the Central African Great Lakes and rivers, in the process circumnavigating Lakes Victoria and Tanganyika and locating the source of the Nile. 

This was Stanley's second journey in central Africa. In 1871–72 he had searched for and successfully found the missionary and explorer David Livingstone. In his publications, Stanley described greeting him with the famous words: "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"

Between 1874 and 1877 Henry Morton Stanley traveled Central Africa east to west, exploring Lake Victoria, Lake Tanganyika and the Lualaba and Congo rivers. He covered 7,000 miles (11,000 km) from Zanzibar in the east to Boma at the mouth of the Congo in the west. The expedition resolved several open questions concerning the geography of Central Africa, including identifying the source of the Nile, which he proved was not the Lualaba.


Stanley's journey had four principal aims:

There was controversy among earlier explorers as to whether these lakes and rivers were connected to each other and the Nile. Richard Burton thought that Lake Victoria might have a southern inlet, possibly from Lake Albert, meaning that the source of the Nile was not Lake Victoria as explorer John Speke had argued. Samuel Baker thought that Lake Albert might have an inlet from Lake Tanganyika. Livingstone thought that Lualaba was the source of the Nile.

$850 -- Through the Dark Continent by Henry Morton Stanley

2 volumes. The American first printing of the first edition in the original Deluxe Half-Leather and Marbled Boards binding.

Numerous illustrations and maps throughout, including 34 full page plates and two very large folding maps in rear pockets of each volume.

An unusually nice set, internally near pristine.

$599 - The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia by Samuel White Baker

The first printing of the first edition, published in 1867

Here is a rarity. Original cloth binding. 1867 first London edition published by Macmillan. 

Sir Samuel White Baker’s THE NILE TRIBUTARIES OF ABYSSINIA AND THE SWORD HUNTERS OF THE HAMRAN ARABS

This is one of the most exciting accounts of true exploration and adventure ever published.

The endsheets on this copy were replaced at the time that the spine cloth was internally reinforced. 

Baker and his young wife, whom he purportedly stole from a slave auction in the Ottoman Empire when he was not the winning bidder, for an entire year explored the many tributaries of the Nile and learned Arabic in preparation for exploring for the source of the Nile. The Bakers’ subsequent Nile explorations, and meeting John Hanning Speke and James Augustus Grant on their way back from discovering the source of the Nile, is covered in Baker’s THE ALBERT N’YANZA, which was published in 1866 even though the events occurred AFTER the events of THE NILE TRIBUTARIES.

Notice the illustration to the front of the book depicting a man using a sword to ham-string an elephant that is chasing another man on horseback!

*** SOLD ***   MY KALULU by Henry Morton Stanley

Here is a very uncommon first edition from 1874. 

MY KALULU, PRINCE, KING AND SLAVE: A Story of Central Africa 

You won’t find a nicer copy for sale anywhere else.

On Henry Stanley’s journey to find David Livingstone, Stanley was given a young black boy, whom Stanley renamed Kalulu, which is Swahili for “rabbit.”

After Stanley found Livingstone (“Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”), Stanley took Kalulu with him to England and spent 6 weeks writing HOW I FOUND LIVINGSTONE (1872), which was very popular with the public, which was enamored with Livingstone and Livingstone’s trials and tribulations. 

MY KALULU was Stanley’s first work of fiction. It was written for Boys.

Stanley went on to become even more famous as an explorer in Africa. In 1874, the New York Herald and the Daily Telegraph financed Stanley on another expedition to Africa. His ambitious objective was to complete the exploration and mapping of the Central African Great Lakes and rivers, in the process circumnavigating Lakes Victoria and Tanganyika and locating the source of the Nile. Kalulu drowned while on this expedition with Stanley, who wrote his account of the expedition in THROUGH THE AFRICAN CONTINENT (1878). 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalulu

$195  -  The Highlands of Ethiopia

Published by J. Winchester, New World Press, circa 1843/1844, though no date in the book.

This is the First American edition "from the first London edition"

392 total pages; text ends at 338, 8 appendices from 339-392

Half title: The highlands of Ethiopia described, during eighteen months' residence of a British embassy at the Christian court of Shoa

Title page with a vignette illustration

Color lithograph (Endicott) immediately after title-page.

Single illustration on a plate, facing page 105

Single illustration on a plate, facing page 201

Two illustrations on a plate, facing page 297

Appendix VII "Catalogue of extant mss. in the Ethiopic and Amharic tongues": p. 360-361

Appendix VIII "Senkesar or Synaxaria. The calendar of the Ethiopic Christian church": p. 363-392

Harris led an expedition into Ethiopia (Abyssinia) for the British government, and describes in detail local cultural and physical conditions. Text in double columns. Six illustrations, including color lithograph of King Sahela Selassie. Important early work on this area of Africa. 

$75  -  Fighting on the Congo & On the Trail of the Arabs

Herbert Strang’s FIGHTING ON THE CONGO & its companion novel ON THE TRAIL OF THE ARABS. First editions, 1906 & 1907.

FIGHTING ON THE CONGO is very rare.

Click here to view all photos in their original size 

$55 -  Harry Collingwood THROUGH VELD AND FOREST

An African Story 

A nice first British edition from 1914 with beautiful color illustrations by Arch Webb.

Blackie is known for publishing pretty editions.

$50  -  Harry Collingwood THE CONGO ROVERS

1894, 1st American edition

A Story of the Slave Squadron along West Africa.

Blackie published the novel earlier in 1885 in England. See the Ad that I found on the Internet.

*** SOLD *** GORILLA HUNTERS by R.M. Ballantyne

Here is a very uncommon 1868 edition

You won’t find a nicer copy for sale anywhere else.

The 1861 first edition is extremely rare, and only the famous London booksellers Jarndyce and Peter Harrington have copies for sale at over $4000.

The copy that I have for sale is an 1868 edition, same publisher as the first edition: T. Nelson. 

This is as close as you will get to owning a first edition for a decent price. I could find no other copies published in the 1860s for sale anywhere else.

Front inner hinge strengthened. Former owner signature, and stamps. Some foxing, but mainly to early and late pages.

As for the 1861 first edition ... Quayle 26a; Sadleir 110 recording a copy, but he did not have it in his own collection; not in Wolff. Quayle notes that 'few copies of the first edition appear to have survived, and to find one in the original cloth binding is a rare occurrence. This may well be a measure of the popularity of the tale, the book having been "read to death" in the first few years of its existence to be finally consigned to the dustbin, dog-eared and tattered'. 

After the popular publication in early 1861 of Paul du Chaillu's book Exploration in Equatorial Guinea which included passages on the hitherto little-known gorilla (or 'ferocious wild men of the forest'), the publishers T. Nelson & Sons persuaded Ballantyne to write a novel on the subject. Published in December 1861, The Gorilla Hunters incorporates the characters of Jack Martin, Ralph Rover, and Peterkin Gay who also appeared in Ballantyne's most enduring novel Coral Island, published in 1858.

JOY

Ballantyne was born in Edinburgh in 1825. He joined the Hudson's Bay Company at the age of 16 leaving Scotland for remote Canada and the tough world of fur trading. Following in the footsteps of his uncle who was the printer of Sir Walter Scott's novels, Ballantyne privately printed his first tale Hudson Bay, a story of 'every-day life in the wilds of North America'. It began a prolific career in which Ballantyne produced scores of adventure novels for children. Between 1856 until his death in 1894 Ballantyne produced two if not three books a year. With his global tales of derring-do and exciting stories of the fast-paced and ever-changing Victorian world, Ballantyne, Sutherland notes, 'did for the English schoolboy's geography what Henty did for history'.