Sold for $2,500

2 volumes, 4to. Half-titles, titles, 2 mounted portraits, 2 photogravure plates on india paper, 36 mounted wood-engraved plates, 6 signed etchings by M. G. Montbard, 4 colored maps & plans (the 2 larger folding maps mounted on linen), 1-page facsimile autograph. Publisher's half morocco, vellum gilt-blocked boards, top edge gilt, others uncut (minor soiling to vellum, slightly scuffed and rubbed). Provenance: Chisholm family (20th-century armorial bookplates).

 

LIMITED EDITION, number 67 of 250 copies of the Demy Quarto Edition de Luxe, SIGNED BY STANLEY on limitation leaf. 

 

Lord Stanley’s 1887 mission to relieve the besieged governor of Egypt was his last mission to Africa.  He arrived to discover that the governor did not care to be rescued and was instead angry that Stanley had interfered in his affairs.  When Stanley and Emin entered Bagamoyo ahead of their caravan on 4 December 1889, it caused a sensation.  Stanley began to write his account of the rescue at the Hotel Victoria in Cairo on 25 January 1890. He worked on the manuscript continuously at a rate of 20 pages per day. The first portion of the manuscript was delivered to the printer on 12 March and Clowes returned the last proof sheet on 3 June.  "It may be safely asserted ... that no work of travel of this magnitude was ever before produced in so short a space of time" (Author's and Publisher's Note, p. iv). Hosken, p. 189.