POWELL-COTTON (Percy Horace Gordon). - Lot 183

POWELL-COTTON (Percy Horace Gordon). In Unknown Africa. A narrative of twenty months of travel and sport in unknown regions and among new tribes. London: Hurst & Blackett, 1904. — In-8, 232 x 150: XXIII, 619 pp., 2 maps. Publisher’s blue percaline cloth binding, title and giraffe head in black on the front cover, plain spine adorned with the title and a gilt plate, untrimmed. First edition of the adventure and hunting account by Percy Horace Gordon Powell-Cotton (1866–1940), a British explorer and hunter who traveled through Abyssinia, Uganda, Kenya, the Congo, and Sudan in 1902–1903. In it, he recounts his hunts (lions, elephants, giraffes, rhinoceroses) and his encounters with local tribes (Kikuyu, Maasai, Turkana), whose customs he describes with great insight. The landscapes he traversed (lakes, mountains, forests, savannas) are depicted with precision, offering a complete immersion in wild Africa. The book concludes with an assessment of the expedition, supplemented by scientific appendices (lists of game, local names of animals, and inventories of collected specimens). The edition is adorned with numerous black-and-white illustrations within the text and as full-page plates, the majority of which are photographs. It also includes two fold-out maps separate from the text. A copy from the library of the artist, adventurer, and ethnographer Herbert WARD (1863–1919). [See lot no. 36 for a profile of this individual.] Very well-preserved copy, largely uncut. Foxing. Provenance: Herbert and Sarita Ward, with an ex-libris designed by Herbert Ward and engraved by Emery Walker.