The life and adventures of Dr. Livingston in the interior of South Africa (1868)

"The life and adventures of Dr. Livingston in the interior of South Africa: Comprising a description of the regions which he traversed; an account of missionary pioneers, and chapters on cotton cultivation, slavery, wild animals, etc., etc. By H. G. Adams. Illustrated with Portrait, and Sixty Engravings; the drawings by Sargent, Harvey, Thomas, Wood, etc."; Hardcovers with gilt decoration. All page edges gilt; Collation complete - (xxviii), 355 pages; Text in English; Hardcovers in very good condition, spine bumped to the top an bottom. Inner hinges a fragile. Pages/text block with some yellowing and occasional light foxing.

David Livingstone (19 March 1813 – 1 May 1873) was a Scottish Congregationalist pioneer medical missionary with the London Missionary Society and an explorer in Africa. His meeting with H. M. Stanley on 10 November 1871 gave rise to the popular quotation "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" Perhaps one of the most popular national heroes of the late 19th century in Victorian Britain, Livingstone had a mythic status, which operated on a number of interconnected levels: Protestant missionary martyr, working-class "rags to riches" inspirational story, scientific investigator and explorer, imperial reformer, anti-slavery crusader, and advocate of commercial empire. His fame as an explorer helped drive forward the obsession with discovering the sources of the River Nile that formed the culmination of the classic period of European geographical discovery and colonial penetration of the African continent. At the same time his missionary travels, "disappearance" and death in Africa, and subsequent glorification as posthumous national hero in 1874 led to the founding of several major central African Christian missionary initiatives carried forward in the era of the European "Scramble for Africa".