Jock Of The Bushveld

First Edition, first impression, in original green cloth, gilt titles on front cover and spine, professionally rebacked, with the original spine laid down. The boards are rubbed and marked; the text block is generally very good/clean, with occasional finger-smudges/foxing in places, some stain marks on the fore-edge, and some pages with closed tears on bottom margins (see images). Both end-papers have heavy tape residue marks, but apart from this there are no major faults, making this a 'good to very good' copy.

NOTES: Fitzpatrick was born in King William's Town on 24 July 1862, and died at Amanzi (Uitenhage) on 24 January 1931. He was the eldest son of James Coleman Fitzpatrick, judge of the Supreme Court of the Cape Colony, and Jenny Fitzgerald, both from Ireland. In the early 1900's he used to recount the adventures of his dog Jock (a Staffordshire Bull Terrier cross), in the form of bedtime stories to his four children, Nugent, Alan, Oliver, and Cecily, to whom the book was dedicated. Rudyard Kipling, an intimate friend, used to take part in these story-telling evenings and he it was who persuaded Fitzpatrick to put the stories together in book form. Fitzpatrick’s adventures during this time of his life, when he was pioneering in the Bushveld, are vividly described in his book Jock of the Bushveld, which is generally accepted as a South African classic. Having done this, Fitzpatrick searched for a suitable artist to illustrate the book and eventually came across Edmund Caldwell in London and brought him to South Africa to visit the Bushveld and make the drawings on the spot. The book, which appeared in 1907 for the first time, was an immediate and overwhelming success, being reprinted four times in that year. source: http://www.krugerpark.co.za/