South African Memories. Prepared for the press from the manuscript of the author by G H Wilson

[With binding error: see below.]

In his Foreword, G H Wilson, who had been charged during FitzPatrick's last illness with organising his "Scraps of History" (as he called them), writes that the book " . . . covers a very wide field of action, throwing much new light on the chequered history of the Transvaal in the period immediately before the South African War and thus supplementing Sir Percy's brilliant volume, 'The Transvaal from Within' [see Lot 15], which, in 1899, had so profound an effect on British public opinion in relation to South African affairs. Political questions, however, have, for the most part, been excluded from the present volume, which is mainly episodal in character."

The unattributed biographical introduction may also have been by Wilson.

While the longest chapters are on the Battle of Colenso and Jock of the Bushveld, General de la Rey is the subject of two chapters, totalling 48 pp, while Rhodes features in three chapters.>

Blue cloth-boards, gilt to the spine; top edge blue; plain endpapers; 320 pp of text and index + frontispiece of FitzPatrick and three other plates (Rhodes and Beit; President Kruger addressing a meeting at Krugersdorp - a rare 1896 photograph taken by FitzPatrick; and De la Rey in 1909 - this plate has been bound upside down).

The covers are clean and the spine unfaded; without the blistering on all three cover faces, the condition would be better than Good; there is a binding crack at the back and the back cover has loosened. There is a small Grocott and Sherry label on the front paste-down, but the book is unmarked. The front and bottom page edges have medium foxing, as have the first twenty or so leaves.

This is, nevertheless, a collectable copy - additionally, perhaps, for the binding error.