Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa; including a sketch of sixteen years' residence in the interior of Africa (1857)

[For a copy of the cheaper edition of 1899, see Lot 135]

Although also published in 1857, the black-only folding frontispiece of the Victoria Falls and first 2 plates indicates that this is not a first impression - in which these plates were in colour.

However, this remains a very good copy of the first edition. Publisher's original tan cloth-boards, blind decoration to both faces and similar decoration and gilt lettering to the spine, plain endpapers, illustrated title-page, author's dedication and preface, x + frontispiece engraving of the author + 687 pp of text and appendix + 20 further inserted plates and 17 smaller illustrations in the text + 6-fold 2-col map at the end + 8 pp of publisher's announcements.

There is some minor bubbling to the cloth of the upper panel, light shelf wear and a small (28 mm x 3 mm) sliver of cloth, still present, coming away at the top front of the upper board. There is an ink inscription at the front. The contents are complete and otherwise unmarked. The page edges are sunned but there is no page foxing.