A HUNTER'S WANDERINGS IN AFRICA. (Perhaps the most famous of all hunting books)

Containing accounts of explorations beyond the Zambesi, on the River Chobe, and in the Matabele and Mashuna countries, with full notes upon the natural history and present distribution of all the large mammalia. 

With 19 Full-Page Illustrations by J. Smit, E. Whymper, and Miss A.B. Selous. 

First edition: xvii, 455 pages, wood engraved frontispiece "A narrow escape; Mashuna Land, September 17, 1878", folding map, 18 engraved plates and other chapter endpieces, original green cloth decorated with three antelope heads in gilt on the upper cover and titled and decorate gilt on the spine. The cloth is dull and the spine has been simply repaired with clear adhesive tape. Book plate on the front paste-down endpaper. Several newspaper cuttings and photographs are pasted on the preliminary pages i to xvii including portraits of Selous and his wife, a six-page obituary of Selous by Abel Chapman extracted from the journal British Birds, and a lengthy obituary from The Times (Monday, January 8, 1917) and other newspaper clippings. The folding map is torn at the first fold and there is some scattered foxing and spotting on the uncut page edges. A note by a previous owner on the front free endpaper above a pasted in newspaper portrait of Selous states, ‘I met F.C. Selous when dining at the British Ornithologist Club dinner and the Restaurant Frascati, 32 Oxford Street on February 20th, 1895 (T.P.).’

 "The author's first book. 'A Hunter's Wanderings' was an immediate success and the first edition of 1000 copies sold out within a year." Taylor: The Mighty Nimrod. The first edition of perhaps the most famous of all hunting books.

Czech (Dr Kenneth) An Annotated Bibliography of African Big Game Hunting Books, 1785-1999, Trophy Room Books, New edition, 2011, page 251.