Donker Johannesburg (1912)

Born in Friesland in 1868, Lub came to South Africa at the age of 24 to take up a teaching post in the South African Republic. Although he spent the remaining 34 years of his life in the Transvaal education system, ending his career as inspector of Witwatersrand schools, Lub's writing (Schoonees noted; see Lot 100) never became "pure Afrikaans", being peppered with English and other words and phrases. However, Schoonees and others, including the editor of Brandwag, rated him highly, especially for his "melancholy" sketches of the poor whites. Schoonees also wrote that Lub drove an ambulance train for six months during the Anglo-Boer War.

Five volumes of Lub's short stories were published between 1908 and 1918, with Donker Johannesburg being reissued in a second revised and illustrated edition (this copy) and being translated into English, as Dark Johannesburg, now perhaps scarcer than the Afrikaans original.

Grey cloth-boards with black lettering and design to the front and black lettering to the spine, which has been renewed, with the original spine cover aid down. New endpapers. iv + 122 pp of text with monochrome line drawings in the text.

Neatly restored, this is now a clean and attractive copy, with sunning limited to the first and last text leaves.