Narrative of a Residence in South Africa . . . (New Edition, 1840)

" . . . To which is prefixed a biographical sketch of the author by Josiah Conder"

Thomas Pringle came to South Africa with his family from Scotland in a party of 1820 Settlers. They established their Glen Lynden estate in the Albany district, but Thomas soon moved to Cape Town, where he became an activist with John Fairbairn and others for press freedom in the colony and an advocate for the abolition of slavery. Pursuing this work, he moved to London, where he was appointed secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society.

Early in 1834, the year of his death, he completed what was effectively his last work, "African Sketches", with prose and poetry sections and dedicated to his father, Robert Pringle, who had remained in Glen Lynden. Later in the same year, he decided to omit the poetry section and to republish the work as a "Narrative of a Residence in South Africa". He wrote the preface on 12 November 1834. Meanwhile his poor health made a warmer climate desirable and he booked a passage back to the Cape. He was destined not to leave London, however, dying there only three weeks later.

The 1840 "new edition" is set in xvi + 116 pp of double-column type, of which Conder's biography ("Life of the Author") occupies pp ix-xvi.

This copy is quarter-bound in tan calf and green buckram with the title gilt-stamped on the spine between two raised bands. The cloth is lightly rubbed towards the outside edges. On the front paste-down of the plain cream endpapers is the bookplate of Philip Wathen Court. A cancelled stamp of the International African Institute is on the half-title.

Although there are a few marginal marks, a few words lost from the top two lines of one column of pp 41-44 and minor repairs to the top edges of pp 45/46 and 65/66, this remains an attractive copy of this rare item.