an unsurpassed work
BURCHELL, William John.
Travels in the interior of Southern Africa.
London, The Batchworth Press, 1953.
2 vols, 8vo, I: pp. xxix, [1], 381, 3; II: pp. xvi, 473, [1]; with 17 plates, 94 illustrations in text, and 2 folding maps; a clean, crisp, tight copy in original blue cloth with gilt lettered spines; traces of tape to endpapers, extremities and covers very slightly rubbed.
Limited edition reprint (1250 copies) of William Burchell’s seminal 1822 account of his travels through South Africa. ‘The most valuable and accurate work on South Africa published up to the first quarter of the nineteenth century, and embracing a description of a large part of the Cape Colony and Bechuanaland at this period. Theal (History of South Africa, 1795-1834) remarks that the author was “a man of talent, an easy writer, and scrupulously exact in his descriptions,” and according to Slater he was “a most skillful and well-trained zoologist and botanist, and his observations are all accurate and methodical”’ (Mendelssohn). Overall, Burchell spent more than four years in South Africa and penetrated as far as ‘Lattakoo’, modern day Kuruman, making ‘important collections of the fauna, flora, and curiosities of the country, together with a large number of drawings’ (Mendelssohn). According to Kennedy, ‘Burchell’s Travels . . . is generally acknowledged to be unsurpassed by any other item, if we take into account accuracy, the background knowledge of the writer, new information, illustrations (both for accuracy and beauty), typography and book production’ (Africana Repository, p. 90).
This copy is a 1953 reprint of Burchell’s first edition, published between 1822 and 1824, with additional material and a new introduction by the social anthropologist Isaac Schapera (1905-2003). The reprint reproduces all but 4 of Burchell’s original plates and illustrations, although some of the vignettes have been reduced in size (see I, pp. xviii-xix).
For the original see: Abbey, Travel 327; Hosken, p. 32; Mendelssohn I, p. 224; Theal pp. 50-51; Tooley 116.
