xxii + 544 pages, 8vo (215 x 140 mm), hand coloured engraved frontispiece, 2 hand coloured plates, folding map repaired, contemporary full sprinkled calf worn at extremities, contents free of foxing.
Mendelssohn (Sydney) South African Bibliography 1.408: 'One of the cleverest volumes of fabricated travel ever produced. The details are so circumstantial, and the mixture of fact and fiction is accomplished with so much skill, that it is not uncommon to find people who do not know that the account of the travels is nothing more than a well-contrived literary deception ... The fraud was exposed by Isaac D'Israeli in his "Curiosities of Literature" and he observed, "Damberger's travels ... made a great sensation and the public were duped; they proved to be the ideal voyages of a member of the German Grub Street about his own garret."'
The volume contains one or two coloured illustrations which are evidently drawn from imagination, as the representations of the natives do not in the least resemble them from either the physiognomical or sartorial point of view. There is also a map of Africa which has been compiled from a number of contemporary charts, and the construction of which is elaborately described by a gentleman calling himself C. F. Goldbach of Leipzig.
- Overall Condition: Very good
- Size: 8vo (215 x 140 mm)
- Sold By: Clarke's Africana & Rare Books
- Contact Person: Paul Mills
- Country: South Africa
- Email: [email protected]
- Telephone: 021 794 0600
- Preferred Payment Methods: Visa & Mastercard via PayGate secure links and Bank transfers.
- Trade Associations: ABA - ILAB, SABDA
