SONGS OF THE VELD - SCARCE 1st. EDITION IN ORIGINAL WRAPS

This first edition is an extremely rare volume of poems which first appeared in 'The New Age', a liberal and anticolonialist periodical, and which was then published in book form in 1902. At one time it was thought to be by Olive Schreiner and it is indeed included in Mendelsohn's South African Bibliography as such. Subsequently only one of the poems, Scheepers, was attributed to her, but was in fact by her friend Betty Molteno. Somehow the association has persisted and the book is still considered by some as an ""Olive Schreiner item"". The poems leaked war time information about the atrocities committed by the British army on the civilian population, to the outside world. Those poems written by South Africans were anonymous to prevent prosecution under martial law. The South African contributors include C.Louis Leipoldt (his first published poem), Alice Greene, Betty Molteno, Anna Purcell, Dr. F.C.Kolbe and others. The book was published for the 304 subscribers listed in it, and there were probably not many more copies printed as the sentiments expressed in it were hated by the British and it was banned in South Africa. It is thus one of the very scarcest Boer War items in first edition. It is not in the Hackett Bibliography of South African War Books. It is particularly scarce in the original wrappers. It was republished in 2008 by Marthinus van Bart, a jounalist for 'Die Burger'. The reprint is done beautifully with a 160pp. well researched commentary on the background to the book and it's various contributors. Van Bart located 2 copies of the first edition in the archives of UCT and Stellenbosch University (the latter used for the reprint) but was unable to find one in the private sector.

This copy IS in the original stiff printed buff wrappers. It comes from the Africana library of James Hamilton Russel and has his discrete small rubber stamped insignia on the front wrapper and on the title page. The name of Olive Schreiner is written faintly in pencil on the front wrapper, in ink on the spine and ""Olive Schreiner"" is written in a small ink script on the title page. There is moderate loss of parts of the paper spine (including part of the handwritten Olive Schreiner name) and some slight spotting of the endpapers. The pages are otherwise clean, the book is tight and the edges are all uncut. A collectable copy of this rarity.

Accompanied by a fine copy in dw. of the Martinus Van Bart reprint. (2