early Zulu ethnography
SHOOTER, Joseph.
The Kafirs of Natal and the Zulu country ...
London, E. Stanford, 1857.
8vo, pp. x, 403; with half-title, lithographic frontispiece and 3 plates, several woodcuts in text, and 1 partly coloured map; browned, occasional marks, damp staining to corners of plates; in recent quarter dark blue morocco and light blue cloth, spine lettered and tooled in gilt.
First edition, one of the earliest studies of the Zulu people.
‘One of the best works on the native races of Natal and Zululand published up to the middle of the nineteenth century. The author took great pains to gain an accurate knowledge of the habits of the people during his four years’ residence in Natal, and the results of his researches have been amplified by the addition of information collected from the works of Döhne, Isaacs, and others, and the MSS. of “the unfortunate traveller, Green,” and from evidence given by Mr. Fynn before a special commission. The volume contains a history of Chaka and his successors, together with a complete account of the personal appearance, mode of life, and the political, social, and domestic institutions of the natives, with information respecting their superstitions, laws, warfare, and manufactures. In the appendix will be found “A Sketch from Natal,” and a short grammar of the Kaffir language, and there are four lithographic plates, from sketches by Mr. E. Redinger of Natal, and a number of woodcuts in the letter-press’ (Mendelssohn II, p. 315).
