Jock of the Bushveld (SIGNED)

Signed on the title page "J Percy Fitzpatrick." His full name is Sir James Percy Fitzpatrick.

First edition, eighth impression. xvi, 476 pages, colour frontispiece, plates and marginal illustrations, dark green cloth with gilt titling and gilt vignette of Jock on the upper cover,some spotting within the pages and on the page edges, with 2 of the 3 drawings of a dung beetle pushing his load with his front legs rather than his back legs on pages 65, 337 and 457. New endsheets to tighten the binding.

The dedications page reads: It was the youngest of the High Authorities who gravely informed the Inquiring Stranger that “Jock belongs to the Likkle People!” That being so, it is clearly the duty, no less than the privilege, of the mere Narrator to dedicate the Story of Jock to those Keenest and Kindest critics, Best of Friends, and Most Delightful of Comrades The Likkle People.

Fitzpatrick's adventures during this time of his life, when he was pioneering in the Bushveld, are vividly described in his book Jock of the Bushveld, which is generally accepted as a South African classic.

In the early 1900's he used to recount the adventures of his dog Jock (a Staffordshire Bull terrier cross), in the form of bedtime stories to his four children, Nugent, Alan, Oliver, and Cecily, to whom the book was dedicated - the likkle people.

Rudyard Kipling, an intimate friend, used to take part in these story-telling evenings and it was he who persuaded Fitzpatrick to put the stories together in book form. Having done this, Fitzpatrick searched for a suitable artist to illustrate the book and eventually came across Edmund Caldwell in London and brought him to South Africa to visit the Bushveld and make the drawings on the spot.

The book, which appeared in 1907 for the first time, was an immediate and overwhelming success.

Extracted from his South African Memories pages 24 - 25: Of course to those who have read Jock of the Bushveld he needs no introduction. Jock and Jess and Jim will always live in the memories of the Little People whom he was addressing and whom in every generation of young South Africans he will continue to address. The Little People have always loved Jock and his companions because they know what was being told to them was true and that it was all about their own wonderful country.

From the same book: The[y]... insisted that the writer of Jock owed it to the Little People of South Africa, from whom he has received many evidences of friendship, to show gratitude by writing something more about Jock... No - there will never be a sequel. A good deal was cut out and more was never told, but apart from that, the story of Jock is as simply true as the writer's memory could make it.

Research by Clarkes Africana and Rare Books - Auction 59 Lot 1