REMINISCENCES OF KIMBERLEY (1911)

Publisher's green cloth binding with gilt titles to front panel and spine.

436pp + 4pp [publisher's catalogue].

A very scarce title. Louis Cohen was present on the Kimberley Diamond Fields during the early days of the diamond rush. He famously partnered up with Barney Barnato when the two young men were still finding their way in life. To Cohen's great regret their partnership dissolved shortly before Barnato struck it lucky on the diamond fields. He knew all the great personalities before they became mining magnates and Rand Lords and one of them, Sir Joseph Benjamin Robinson, was Cohen's very particular object of ridicule in this notorious memoir. Robinson successfully sued for libel and Cohen had to pay him £1,000 in damages. The book was withdrawn and Cohen spent two years in jail.

Although this title was a fairly cheap production it has always been a very hard-to-find book. Contents generally clean with old paper reinforcement along some of the inner hinges.

'The author remarks that he "will attempt to describe men and things" as he had known and seen them "for the last thirty-five years", and those who lived amongst the scenes he depicts can testify to the general accuracy of the vivid pictures he has drawn of the early days of the Diamond Fields. Many of the character sketches are written in an extremely caustic manner, and many of the African magnates are handled in a somewhat rougher manner than is generally accorded to these favourites of fortune'. - Mendelssohn, Vol.I, page 351