OLD CAPE HOMESTEADS AND THEIR FOUNDERS (Presentation copy)

Written and Illustrated with Pen and Pencil Drawings by Mrs. A.P. (sic) Trotter: with photographs by "The Cape Times" photographer: photographs and pen drawings reproduced by the "Cape Times" process department

The Cape Times Christmas Number, 1898. 44 pages, many sketches and photographs, specially bound in pictorial oatmeal boards titled in red on the upper cover, with a paper spine, light foxing, a good copy.

Presentation inscription on the front free end paper reads: To Mrs Koopman, (Although she does not quite approve of it) With love and best wishes for Xmas from Alys Fane Trotter, 1898

Dictionary of South African Biography, volume V, pages 782-3. Old Cape Homesteads and their founders is Mrs Trotter's pioneering work on Cape Dutch architecture. It precedes Old Colonial houses of the Cape of Good Hope published in 1900. Alys Fane Trotter (1863 - 1961) lived at the Cape between 1896 and 1898. She cycled throughout the Cape Peninsula and vicinity taking voluminous notes of the old Dutch houses sketching many of them and making accurate and attractive drawings of their construction and embellishment. In 1898 she was invited by the "Cape Times" to write an illustrated history of the old Cape Dutch houses; this was published as the "Cape Times" Christmas number of that year, produced with the assistance of H.C.V. Leibbrandt, keeper of the Cape Archives.'