Short Studies on Great Subjects [including leaves from his South African journal] (3 vols; 1878)

This set is full bound in brown calf with red and black title panels and gilt lettering and tooling to the spine, blind design and gilt rules to the faces and, on the front cover, the gilt-embossed coat of arms of Cheltenham College (1841). Ten of the 12 corners and the spine-cover hinges are rubbed, there is a 2.5 cm tear at the top of the spine of Vol I and a very small tear at the top of the spine of Vol III. The bindings are firm and flexible. The endpapers and all three page edges are marbled. A few early and late leaves are foxed. The three volumes have a combined total of 1834 pp.

On the front paste-down of Vol I is an 1879 prize label (see image). The set comes from the family of H V Bailey, the Class 1C (Military and Civil Department) recipient of the English prize for that year.

Vol III is of particular interest as it includes the first publication of this historian author\'s 82-pp essay \"Leaves from a South African Journal\", with extracts from his diary for 23 August to 26 December 1874, the period of the first of the author\'s two visits to South Africa, starting with his departure from Dartmouth in the Walmer Castle. Among others, he spoke to a Natal Judge and Saul Solomon about the so-called Langabelele case, which appeared to have been a miscarriage of justice, but which led to the suggestion that the Natal Government, conscious of the rightness of its case, should consider relinquishing the British connection and join the Free State. Froude, who was then about sixty, travelled a further 1500 miles to the Orange Free State and the South African Republic, both of whose presidents he saw several times, and to the Diamond Fields, where he wrote very critically about British policy.