First Edition: 2 volumes, I. viii + [iv contents] + 582, II. [vi] + 648 pages, half title page in each volume, errata leaf, hand-coloured aquatint frontispieces, 20 hand-coloured aquatint plates - 5 of which are fine folding panoramas, 96 wood engravings, contemporary full sprinkled calf rebacked but the front board of volume I is detached, the spines are gilt decorated in panels and titled on titled on dark red and black leather labels, marbled endpapers, bookplates on the front endpapers. The large folding map (850 x 720 mm) as called for at the end of volume I. The author’s route is indicated in red.
HINTS ON EMIGRATION TO THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE, By The Same Author, 4 pages, bound in at the end of volume I.
Overall a very good and crisp set. The single page plates in volume I show some offsetting but this is entirely absent in volume II.
Ian D. Colvin, in his famous introduction to Sydney Mendelssohn’s South African Bibliography, writes, ‘Of Burchell I might say without much exaggeration that he is in many respects the greatest name in our bibliography. He is not, certainly, one of our greatest travellers, if we judge travel by extent of the new country explored; his greatness lies rather in the quality of his observation. His drawings express the manner of the man he was; in their loving accuracy we see a reflection of a mind devoted to truth for its own sake, not a hard scientific truth as in Barrow, but truth seen with human eyes, in all it colour and beauty. He had a kind of genius for observation, whether in broad outline, as where he describes Cape Town, or in the detail as in his account of a Hottentot’s eyes or an antelope’s horns. Thus, for example, in describing the feathers of the Wilde Paauw, he says: “The irides were of a beautiful, pellucid, changeable, silvery, ferrugineous colour.” Or take this sentence in his description of a vulture: “There was a heaviness in their gait and looks, which made one feel half-inclined to consider them rather as beasts of prey, than as feathered inhabitants of the air.”…To my mind Burchell is the equal of the best in this style of writing; not even Ruskin could have improved on many of his passages.’
See Abbey (J.R.) Travel in Aquatint and Lithography 1770-1860, number 327 (pages 281/2). Abbey mentions that 750 copies of volume I and 500 copies of volume II were printed.
See also Alfred Gordon-Brown’s introduction to the facsimile reprint published by Struik in 1967.
- Size: Size: 4to (280 x 215 mm)
