Whose islands?
BOYSON, Violet Fenton.
The Falkland Islands … With notes on the natural history by Rupert Vallentin.
Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1924.
8vo, pp. xii, [4], [13]-414, [2]; with half-title, 34 illustrations on 23 plates, and 1 folding map; half-title slightly browned, a little foxing to map; very good in original blue cloth, spine lettered in gilt; some wear to spine ends and corners, without dust jacket.
Added to your basket:
The Falkland Islands … With notes on the natural history by Rupert Vallentin.
First edition of Violet Fenton Boyson’s history of the Falkland Islands, in what remains a standard work on the subject. Boyson was initially asked by the naturalist Rupert Vallentin to edit his notebooks on the natural history of the island. In response, Boyson suggested supplementing these notes with a general history, which she eventually agreed to write herself (the photographs are by Vallentin). In order to publish the book with Clarendon Press a £100 grant was provided by the Colonial Office, who were keen on editing out any content which may bring into question the island’s still contentious status as a British colony.
Boyson’s study begins by outlining the political history of the islands, from the first settlements in the late sixteenth century to the recapture of the islands by British forces in 1832-33, before devoting chapters to local industry and geography; a chapter on zoology, by Vallentin, is included as an appendix. ‘Despite limited sales the importance of the book should not be underestimated. Boyson discovered many previously unpublished or unpublicised documents relating to the discovery and subsequent settlement of the Islands both in the Colonial Office and the British Museum. Almost all subsequent histories of the Islands have drawn extensively on her work, which remains the standard work on the history of the Islands’ (Dictionary of Falklands Biography).
