Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa;

with the west lithographs

The most desirable, and rarest, early issue with the frontispiece and plate 8 and 16 lithographed by W. West. There is significant disagreement as to the precedence of the different variant illustrations: the only agreed upon point is that when page 8 has been replaced with 8* it is a later issue. This copy has the original page 8.

The book covers the first of Livingstone's three major expeditions "in which he followed the Zambezi, discovering Victoria Falls in the process, as well as the Shire and Ruyuma rivers, ranging from Angola in the west to Mozambique in the east … During these years he explored vast regions of central Africa, many of which had never been seen by white men before" (PMM).

First edition; 8vo (22 x 15 cm); folding tinted lithograph frontispiece by W. West (lightly foxed), engraved portrait, 2 folding maps, 20 full-page wood-engraved plates and 2 further lithographs by W. West, one of which tinted, folding plan, illustrations in the text; contemporary full calf, gilt green morocco lettering piece, all edges marbled, spine a little rubbed, a very good bound copy; x, 687 pp.

Abbey Travel 347; Howgego L39; LLoyd, Livingstone, 1873-1973, p.10; Mendelssohn I, p.908; Printing and the Mind of Man 341.