(3) Books About Africa and South Africa (1862, 1889, 1958). 

Size: (largest) 9 1/4 X 6 1/4 X 1 in. 

This lot consists of three books about Africa: one is Explorations And Adventures In Equatorial Africa by Paul du Chaillu from 1862, the second one is Wonders of the Tropics, Or Explorations And Adventures Of Henry M. Stanley from 1889, and the last is titled Africa South circa 1958, a radical Cape Town journal that railed against apartheid and racial discrimination. The first book is titled Explorations And Adventures in Equatorial Africa: With Accounts Of The Manners And Customs Of The People, And Of The Chase Of The Gorilla, Leopard, Elephant, Hippopotamus, And Other Animals, written by Paul du Chaillu and published in New York by Harper & Brothers in 1862. The book is three-quarters bound, with five raised bands, gilt labels and gilt lettering on the spine, marbled covers and marbled endpapers, a page that lists Harper books related to Africa, then a double-page engraving of a gorilla, the title page is dated 1862 and the copyright page is dated 1861, so this book is a second edition, followed by a seven-page Preface (v - xi), the Contents run from xv to xix, a two-page List of Illustrations (xxi - xxiv)), the text runs from page 25 to 521, with an Appendix that goes to 531, a large folding map of Western Equatorial Africa compiled by Du Chaillu between 1856 and ’59 and a four-page list of books by Harper at the rear, and all the edges are marbled. Paul Belloni Du Chaillu (1831 - 1903) was a French-American traveler, zoologist, and anthropologist. He became famous in the 1860’s as the first modern European outsider to confirm the existence of gorillas - that is celebrated in the double-page engraving of a gorilla at the front of his book here - and later he confirmed the existence of a pygmy people in central Africa, and he researched the prehistory of Scandinavia. (He was sent on an African expedition by the Academy of Natural Sciences at Philadelphia in 1855 and explored the regions of West Africa near the equator, and during his travels from 1856 to 1859, he observed numerous gorillas, known to non-locals in prior centuries only from an ambiguous report credited to Hanno the Navigator of Carthage back in the 5th century BC and known to scientists in the preceding years only by a few skeletons. Du Chaillu brought back dead specimens and presented himself as the first white European to have seen them.) The book measures 9 1/4 x 6 1/4 inches wide and is in very good condition, with a tight binding and clean pages and text. A few pages have brown spots in the margins, there is a chip at the top of the spine and rubbing at the heel, on the leather, and at the tips, the map has a brown spot in the margin and a tear on the left side, and still a solid copy of this rare title. The second book is Wonders Of The Tropics Or The Exploration And Adventures Of Henry M.  Stanley And Other World Renowned Travelers, Including Livingstone, Baker, Cameron, Speke,  Emin Pasha, Du Chaillu, Anderson, etc. etc. Containing Thrilling Accounts of Famous Expeditions, Miraculous Escapes, Wild Sports Of The Jungle And Plain, Curious Customs Of Savage Races … Embellished with more than 200 Striking Illustrations, and it was published by the Globe Bible Publishing Co in Philadelphia in 1889, probably as an effort to Christianize the so-called Dark Continent. The book has pale floral endpapers, a “Presented To” page where you signed your name if you owned the book, a frontis depicts an Ouganga Doctor Discovering A Witch, then the title page, the copyright page is date 1889, a two-page Preface (i - ii), seventeen pages of Contents (iii - xix), a five-page List of Illustrations (xx - xxiv), and 840 pages of text. Sir Henry Morton Stanley (1841 - 1904), born John Rowlands, was a Welsh-American explorer, journalist, soldier, colonial administrator, author, and politician famous for his exploration of Central Africa and his search for missionary and explorer David Livingstone. He was also known for his search for the sources of the Nile and Congo rivers, the work he did as an agent of King Leopold II of Belgium that led to the occupation of the Congo Basin region, and his command of the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition. He was knighted in 1897 and served as a  member of Parliament for five years. But his reputation remains tarnished. Stanley had high regard for many of the native African people who accompanied him on his expeditions, but the accounts of corporal punishment and brutality in his books fostered a public reputation as a hard-driving, cruel leader. His image in Britain also suffered from an inaccurate perception that he was American, and his reputation suffered from the role he played in establishing the Congo Free State for King Leopold II. (The Congo was privately owned by Leopold, not by Belgium, and his reign of the Congo eventually earned infamy because of the atrocities perpetrated on the locals. Ostensibly, the Congo Free State aimed to bring civilization to the local people and to develop the region economically, but Leopold exploited the people and Stanley got tied to the international scandal that followed.) Nevertheless, Stanley is recognized for his contributions to Western knowledge of the geography of Central Africa and for his resolute opposition to the slave trade in East Africa. It is also uncertain whether Stanley was straight with everyone. As Rowlands, he emigrated to the United States when he was 18 and claimed he took the name Stanley after he became friends with Henry Hope Stanley, a wealthy trader, but there are disputes he even met Stanley and that Rowlands was really befriended by a grocer named James Speake. Rowlands / Stanley fought in the American Civil War on the South’s side, got captured and was offered his freedom if he enlisted in the Union army, he got sick and was discharged, then served in the US Navy - possibly the the only man to serve in the Confederate Army, the Union Army, and the Union Navy. After the Civil War, Stanley became a journalist, traveled out west, then led an expedition to the Ottoman Empire that ended badly when he was imprisoned. He travelled to Zanzibar in 1871, claiming he outfitted an expedition with 192 porters, but later stated his expedition numbered only 111, so it appears Stanley was prone to exaggeration. When he finally found Livingstone, he claimed to have greeted him with the now-famous line, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?", but this line does not appear in his journal and it is likely that Stanley embellished the line sometime afterwards. The book measures 9 5/16 x 6 1/2 inches wide and probably needs to be rebound. The spine has chips at the top and the front cover is nearly detached, so the book has wear, with offset from the “Presented To” page in front, occasional brown spots, and the map after the list of illustrations is missing. The last book is Africa South, published in 1958, and well worth the contents. The book is is three-quarter bound, with a gilt title on the spine, marbled boards, pink patterned endpapers, and seventeen articles about segregation and injustice in South Africa, including an article by Stanley Uys about the Prime Minister of South Africa, an article titled Revolutions Are Not Normal (by Micheal Harmel), Satyagraha in South Africa (by Fatima Meer   - Satyagraha is a philosophy of non-violent opposition to injustice), an article titled The Trial Begins (by D. A. Leonard), another about Rhodesia’s Constitutional Road to Independence, a book review at the end, the last page has a required government statement saying that Africa South was founded in 1912 and this is the Quarterly issue published in October 1958, and the book has 128 pages of text. The Uys article accuses the Prime Minister of the country with antisemitism (the Prime Minister was Dr. Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd) and that sets the tone for the book - it is very politically charged against white racism and prejudice in South Africa. The Trial Begins refers  to the Treason Trial, which began in Pretoria in 1958 and involved 91 individuals charged with treason, including black, white, Indian, and colored defendants. The charges stemmed from their alleged attempts to overthrow the South African government and establish a communist state between 1952 and 1956, and the trial was a landmark event in South African history, highlighting the struggle against apartheid and the government's efforts to suppress anti-apartheid movements. The book measures 8 3/8 x 5 1/2 inches wide and is in very good condition, with a tight binding and clean pages and text for the most part, with light rubbing on the spine and at the tips, wear along the top edge of the front cover, browning on the first page of Uys’ article and on the last page of text, the rest of the text is very clean, and there is faint offset from a photograph of a bronze wall plaque towards the back. Stanley Uys (1922 - 2014) was a South African journalist who was considered a legend among journalists in South Africa. He went to high school in Johannesburg, where he became interested in journalism, he wrote extensively for newspapers in India, New Zealand and Ireland and was political editor of the Johannesburg Sunday Times. He interviewed Nelson Mandela several times, once in a secret flat in Johannesburg while Mandela was in hiding from the government. He upset fellow Afrikaners by signing an anti-apartheid declaration related to Ghana, and following the abolition of apartheid, his criticisms of ANC one-party rule annoyed the ANC, but underscored his journalistic rectitude, his moral integrity. Uys was a veteran South African journalist and fierce opponent of apartheid who was unafraid of offending politicians of every party - he had a passionate hatred of the inhumanity of the Afrikaner racist revolution and had an enormous influence on public opinion about the evils of his country's racial system. In the 1960’s, a commission was set up by the government to put the English-language press in its place. Uys and a fellow journalist were singled out in the report, but the government balked at going much farther. Uys also disowned his father and siblings because they were staunch Afrikaners and he believed they had little in common, so much so that his own children never met them. Prices for a first edition of the Du Chaillu book range from about $350 to nearly $1800, we didn’t include Explorations And Adventures Of Henry M. Stanley in our pricing because the  book needs to be rebound, and Africa South is rare and hard to find on the rare book website we use.