With: HINTS ON EMIGRATION TO THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE, By The Same Author and A New Introduction by A. Gordon Brown.
De Luxe Edition: Two volumes, 582 + 648 pages, frontispiece portrait, large folding map loosely inserted at the end of volume 1 - Burchell's journeys are coloured in red, 20 colour plates - 5 folding, many text illustrations, full brown leather gilt, top edges gilt, a very good set.
Number 53 of this facsimile reprint limited to 1000 copies of which 100 are bound in full leather.
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.
- Overall Condition: Very good
- Size: 4to (280 x220)
