SKETCHES REPRESENTING THE NATIVE TRIBES, ANIMALS, AND SCENERY OF SOUTHERN AFRICA

48 soft-ground etchings, 48 leaves of text, with the dedication to Leopold of Saxe Coburg, original brown paper covered boards with a new paper spine with a white title label, new endpapers, the boards are worn around the edges, the top and bottom of the spine are frayed and splitting, corners bumped, edges uncut, contents bright , the volume is housed in a recently made paper and cloth slip case. A very good uncut copy with spacious margins and unusual in the original printer’s boards.

See Abbey (Abbey J.R.) TRAVEL IN AQUATINT AND LITHOGRAPHY 1770 – 1860, Volume I, World, Europe, Africa, No. 326, pages 279 to 281 for a discussion of the editions, upright and oblong and the sizes of the uncut pages of these issues.

Sutton (Thomas): THE DANIELLS ARTISTS AND TRAVELLERS pages 154-5, 'The circumstances in which Samuel Daniell obtained the drawings from which these plates were made are briefly discussed in the Notes to Samuel Daniell's African Scenery and Animals, 1804-5. Samuel Daniell died in Ceylon in 1811. Of the choice of soft-ground etching for the reproduction of his brother's drawings William says, "He has merely to add with respect to the engravings, that he has endeavoured to transfuse into them the spirit of the originals by a process which appeared to him best calculated for the attainment of that object." It is a most beautiful and sensitive work. One can well believe that William had not intruded himself but has indeed kept "the spirit of the originals."' Daniell's sketches are now highly regarded as an early and sympathetic record of African life.