1909. · London
by Stanley, Henry Morton
London: Sampson Low, Marston and Co., Ltd., 1909.. xvii,551,[1]pp. plus sixteen photogravures (including frontispiece portrait), one folding facsimile letter, and one folding map. Titlepage printed in red and black. Half title. Thick quarto. Original green morocco, spine lettered and ruled in gilt, raised bands, covers ruled and front cover stamped in gilt, gilt-ruled turn-ins, t.e.g. Moderate wear and minor fading to spine and extremities; minor scuffing to boards. Original printed tissue guards intact. Small ink ownership inscription on front free endpaper. Extremely light foxing on first few leaves, else fine internally. Very good. Deluxe issue of the first edition, limited to 250 copies signed by Dorothy Stanley, this copy numbered 22. Containing a finely detailed, folding two-color map of central Africa, with Stanley's routes outlined in three colors and an accompanying outline of England and Wales drawn in the same scale for land size comparison.
Henry Morton Stanley, the most accomplished and celebrated 19th-century African explorer, was also one of his era's greatest self- inventors, a feat both chronicled and extended in his posthumously published AUTOBIOGRAPHY. Stanley was born John Rowlands in 1841, the illegitimate son of a housemaid in Wales. As a child, Rowlands suffered years of cruelty at the hands of his family and in the workhouse where he was raised from the age of six. In 1859, Rowlands fled to America and came under the care of a New Orleans cotton merchant named Henry Morton Stanley, who informally adopted Rowlands and gave him his name. At the outbreak of the Civil War, the younger Stanley enlisted in the Confederate Army. In 1862 he fought and was taken prisoner at Shiloh, where, to obtain his release, he enlisted in the Union Army. Soon thereafter, he became a ship's clerk in the Union Navy and would become one of the few people to see battle from both sides of the Civil War (Hochschild, p.25). Following the war, Stanley was hired as a newspaper correspondent for the St. Louis MISSOURI DEMOCRAT. He was assigned to Gen. Hancock's army in the Indian campaigns and distinguished himself with dramatic dispatches to both the DEMOCRAT and various publications on the East Coast. The entire first half of the book is devoted to Stanley's adventures in the Civil War and the Plains Indian Wars.
In 1868 the NEW YORK HERALD hired Stanley to cover war in Abyssinia and in 1869 sent him to find Dr. Livingstone. For the next twenty years Stanley explored and charted much of the African interior, wrote several best- selling books, and helped establish the Congo Free State of Belgian King Leopold II, setting the stage for one of the darkest chapters in the history of European imperialism. In the final years of his life, Stanley lectured widely on his adventures and defended Leopold's massive project against international charges of mass murder and de facto slavery. During this time he also worked on his AUTOBIOGRAPHY, "as he indicates, out of a desire to make his nature and character comprehensible to the world which knew him in the day of his fame" (DAB). The book, which Stanley did not live to complete, was edited and prepared for publication by his wife, Dorothy. Nearly half the work is devoted to Stanley's early life in Wales and America, the formative years that molded the conquering figure of international renown. "It was the American Stanley," according to Constance Lindsay Skinner in the DAB, "the man who had seen the wheel-ruts of pioneer wagons on the western prairie and young sturdy towns on recent Indian battle-grounds, who looked at the Congo region and saw nothing there to daunt determined men thoroughly equipped with the means and methods of civilization." Contemporary scholars write of Stanley and his AUTOBIOGRAPHY with a less celebratory tone, noting the excesses of his career as a Congo taskmaster and the various contradictory and probably fanciful elements in his memoirs (Hochschild, pp.23-25, 235). Nevertheless, Stanley's life and his final book, here in its finest edition, stand as monuments to his era's boldest notions of personal resolve and self-creation. DAB XVII, pp.509-13. Adam Hochschild, KING LEOPOLD'S GHOST (Houghton Mifflin, 1998). (Inventory #: WRCAM36103)
Henry Morton Stanley, the most accomplished and celebrated 19th-century African explorer, was also one of his era's greatest self- inventors, a feat both chronicled and extended in his posthumously published AUTOBIOGRAPHY. Stanley was born John Rowlands in 1841, the illegitimate son of a housemaid in Wales. As a child, Rowlands suffered years of cruelty at the hands of his family and in the workhouse where he was raised from the age of six. In 1859, Rowlands fled to America and came under the care of a New Orleans cotton merchant named Henry Morton Stanley, who informally adopted Rowlands and gave him his name. At the outbreak of the Civil War, the younger Stanley enlisted in the Confederate Army. In 1862 he fought and was taken prisoner at Shiloh, where, to obtain his release, he enlisted in the Union Army. Soon thereafter, he became a ship's clerk in the Union Navy and would become one of the few people to see battle from both sides of the Civil War (Hochschild, p.25). Following the war, Stanley was hired as a newspaper correspondent for the St. Louis MISSOURI DEMOCRAT. He was assigned to Gen. Hancock's army in the Indian campaigns and distinguished himself with dramatic dispatches to both the DEMOCRAT and various publications on the East Coast. The entire first half of the book is devoted to Stanley's adventures in the Civil War and the Plains Indian Wars.
In 1868 the NEW YORK HERALD hired Stanley to cover war in Abyssinia and in 1869 sent him to find Dr. Livingstone. For the next twenty years Stanley explored and charted much of the African interior, wrote several best- selling books, and helped establish the Congo Free State of Belgian King Leopold II, setting the stage for one of the darkest chapters in the history of European imperialism. In the final years of his life, Stanley lectured widely on his adventures and defended Leopold's massive project against international charges of mass murder and de facto slavery. During this time he also worked on his AUTOBIOGRAPHY, "as he indicates, out of a desire to make his nature and character comprehensible to the world which knew him in the day of his fame" (DAB). The book, which Stanley did not live to complete, was edited and prepared for publication by his wife, Dorothy. Nearly half the work is devoted to Stanley's early life in Wales and America, the formative years that molded the conquering figure of international renown. "It was the American Stanley," according to Constance Lindsay Skinner in the DAB, "the man who had seen the wheel-ruts of pioneer wagons on the western prairie and young sturdy towns on recent Indian battle-grounds, who looked at the Congo region and saw nothing there to daunt determined men thoroughly equipped with the means and methods of civilization." Contemporary scholars write of Stanley and his AUTOBIOGRAPHY with a less celebratory tone, noting the excesses of his career as a Congo taskmaster and the various contradictory and probably fanciful elements in his memoirs (Hochschild, pp.23-25, 235). Nevertheless, Stanley's life and his final book, here in its finest edition, stand as monuments to his era's boldest notions of personal resolve and self-creation. DAB XVII, pp.509-13. Adam Hochschild, KING LEOPOLD'S GHOST (Houghton Mifflin, 1998). (Inventory #: WRCAM36103)