BOSVELD JOCK

viii+180pp. Abridged Dutch School Edition in “Superior Binding” intended - and the current copy presented - as a school prize. Bright red cloth covered boards, with gilt titles and the iconic terrier in gilt to top board, echoing the first English edition of 1907 only 2 years prior. Illustrations throughout by E Caldwell, abundant line drawings, 8 b/w plates and a colour frontispiece illustration of Jock.

Elaborate gilt decoration and titles to spine. Top edge gilt. A school prize presentation slip to the front paste down has been clumsily removed, still legible is: “…St Public School…Cape Town…PRIZE” possibly Prestwich Street Public School, Green Point, which was founded in 1910.

A scarce item; records indicate four copies in commerce since publication and only one in the current binding, all of which were incorrectly described as either Afrikaans or German translations.

SABIB lists no earlier translations of Jock.
The translator, Gustav S. Preller, was a towering figure in the development of the Afrikaans language and Afrikaner culture in the wake of the Anglo-Boer war. A.J. Antonites and J.S. du Plessis write of Preller in the Dictionary of South African Biography (Vol 1, 643-647) that he “was the first conscious stylist in Afrikaans literature. His language was larded with foreign words, but he also used new words and combinations of words, including his own coinage, which he combined with racy colloquialism…Preller used Afrikaans distinctively, forcefully and evocatively…He began to write in Afrikaans at a time when most historical publications were in English. He wanted to show the opponents of Afrikaans what could be done with a 'kitchen language' and to make his people aware of their language during a period of anglicization after the Second Anglo-Boer War. His explicit aim was to acquaint his despondent countrymen with their heroic past, so that their pride in that past might restore their courage and their hope for the future; he led them to a discovery of their past.”

At the rear is a list of annotations and a glossary of Afrikaans, English, Dutch and “kaffers” –isiXhosa/isiZulu -  words used throughout the text.

A Very Good copy indeed, the major defect being the partial remnants of the school prize slip. Some very slight rubbing at the head and tail of the spine and the faintest of shelf wear at the feet of the boards. Age toning to the endpapers and a touch of foxing to the fore-edge and to the verso of the colour frontispiece portrait of Jock, which has its tissue guard intact.