Melton Prior

The drawings of Melton Prior reflect a working life spent in the trouble spots of the British Empire. As a war artist employed by The Illustrated London News, Prior recorded both memorable moments and everyday events in the lives of colonials, soldiers and their opponents, on almost every continent.

Prior spent many years away from England: he boasted that between 1873 and 1904 he spent only one complete year at home. In 1878 he was sent to southern Africa for the first time, to cover the Eastern Cape frontier war. By the end of his career he had witnessed and recorded military campaigns in Basutoland, the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879, the Transvaal War of 1880 to 1881, The Jameson Raid, the 1896 Rebellion in Matabeleland, and the South African War of 1899 to 1902. He was known to have sketched accurately and rapidly, and appears to have regarded personal safety as less important than obtaining exciting drawings. The popularity of his work at the time, and its lasting appeal, may rest on his dramatic sense of occasion combined with lively, sometimes amusing, detail. He worked almost entirely in monochrome, other artists of The Illustrated London News often using ink washes to rework his pencil sketches before publication; 279 pages.

This edition is one of 850 copies bound in cloth [printed by CTP Bookbinders, Cape Town, on 118gsm Byronic Text Britewhite, manufactured by Domtar, Canada].