Orange Free State Monthly Magazine February 1878 bound with the Appendix on the Orange River Sovereignty to Holden's 1855 History of the Colony of Natal

This lot was bought at an Anglo-Boer War Museum sale in Bloemfontein in 1968. Its contents include the record of an 1877 lecture by W H Middleton on the history of the town and district of Bethlehem as part of the February 1878 issue of the Orange Free State magazine (pp 149-156) and the Appendix to an original (London) copy of William C Holden's 1855 History of the Colony of Natal (pp 335-463). This appendix, originally planned as a separate publication, covered the "vexed question" of the then proposed Orange-River Sovereignty, which by then had become "an accomplished fact".

On the verso of the page 463 of this appendix is a publisher's announcement of "a new volume in three parts" by the same author with the title "The Native Kaffirs of Natal and Amazulu". This new volume was eventually published for the author in 1866 by the London printer William Nichols under a new title, namely "The Past and Future of the Kaffir Races", the original edition of which is now rare and valuable.

This collection, newly bound in brown Skivertex boards, gilt to the upper panel, with new endpapers, will make an attractive addition to a Free State historical library, particularly as the original edition of Holden's Natal history is now rare.