African Drums

New York: Farrar & Rinehart, (1930). First Edition. First printing. Octavo. Publisher's brown cloth; dustjacket; xiv,318pp; color frontispiece and seven unnumbered leaves of b/w plates after André Durenceau, who also designed the endpapers and dustwrapper. A sound, generally clean copy; text over-opened at p.70, a few faint spots of foxing; Very Good. In the original dustwrapper, unclipped but tattered with losses along upper margin and spine ends, closed tears and age-toning; just Good. With the engraved bookplate of Portland, Oregon collector Frederick W. Skiff (d.1947).

A colorful but cringingly condescending account by an Anglo-American (truncated) trader who spent the years 1882-1896 in what was then French Equatorial Africa, today called the Republic of the Congo. Includes chapters on cannibalism, native African slaveholders, and sexual customs, about which the author warns he "...shall speak with the utmost frankness...for the reason that they are the most powerful and dominating factor" in the lives of the natives of Equatorial Africa. With illustrations in dramatic Art Deco style by Franco-American illustrator and muralist André Durenceau. (Inventory #: 82301)