KEMP, Dennis.
Nine years at the Gold Coast …
London, Macmillan and Co., 1898.
8vo, pp. xv, [1 (blank)], 279, [1 (blank)]; with half-title, frontispiece map of the Gold Coast, 39 further illustrations on 27 plates; some browning to title, a little foxing to fore-edges, a few light marks; a very good uncut copy in original blue cloth, spine lettered in gilt, gilt vignette to upper cover, dark blue endpapers; some wear to extremities and edges.
First edition recounting the author’s experiences in the British colony of Gold Coast, present day Ghana, as general superintendent of the Wesleyan missions.
Kemp, originally from Groombridge, Kent, arrived on the Gold Coast in 1887 and over the next nine years had a transformative impact on missionary work in the area. During this time, he also offered lodgings to the future Ghanaian intellectual and missionary James Aggrey, then still a boy, and in 1895 he served on the Ashanti Expedition under the leadership of Sir Francis Scott which resulted in the arrest and deposition of Asantehene Prempeh I, for which he was awarded the Ashanti Star. Although the present work does contain a short account of the expedition, it is primarily concerned with local missionary efforts in the region and the problems Kemp encountered in trying to further the spread of Christianity, as well as some of Kemp’s ruminations regarding the political and religious future of Britain on the Gold Coast.
