Books

FIRST AMERICAN EDITION, FIRST ISSUE (1878 date). Thick octavo, [two volumes], xiv, [10pp maps], 522; ix, [1], 566pp title in gilt with decorative pictorial illustrations on covers. Light wear at edges. Frontispiece portraits in both volumes all tissues seem to be present, very clean bright copies. A near-fine set. Numerous illustrations and maps throughout, including 34 full page plates and two very large folding maps in rear pockets of each volume. Thick 8vo, publisher s original forest green cloth pictorially decorated in an overall elaborate design incorporating vibrant colours and gilt, spines similarly decorated and blocked. xiv, 522; ix, 566 pp. An unusually fine and bright set, remarkably so, internally near pristine, the cloth bright and fresh with no fading whatsoever, the gilt bright as new, trivial splitting at the edges of the map folds only. Online of the great books in the African oeuvre. Sir Henry Morton Stanley GCB (born John Rowlands; 28 January 1841 10 May 1904) was a Welsh-American journalist, explorer, soldier, colonial administrator, author and politician who was famous for his exploration of central Africa and his search for missionary and explorer David Livingstone, whom he later claimed to have greeted with the now-famous line: "Dr Livingstone, I presume?" He is mainly known for his search for the source of the Nile, work he undertook as an agent of King Leopold II of Belgium, which enabled the occupation of the Congo Basin region, and for his command of the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition. He was knighted in 1899 (Wikipedia).

A detailed narrative of Stanley's expedition through Africa from the eastern to the western coast, shedding light on the uncharted interior of the continent.