Lot 665: HARRIS, Sir William Cornwallis (1807-1848). Portraits of the Game and Wild Animals of Southern

HARRIS, Sir William Cornwallis (1807-1848). Portraits of the Game and Wild Animals of Southern Africa. London: printed by H.W.Martin, published for the proprietor by William Pickering and others, 1840-[1842].

5 parts in 1 vol., 2° (560 x 390mm). Additional lithographic title with hand-coloured vignette, 30 hand-coloured lithographic plates by Frank Howard after Harris, 30 lithographic tailpieces, list of subscribers. (Without advertisements leaf, additional title with a few short tears, trimmed and mounted, a few marginal repairs, some spotting in text.) 20th-century green half morocco, edges gilt.

LARGE-PAPER ISSUE OF 'ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT AND VALUABLE WORKS ON SOUTH AFRICAN FAUNA' (Mendelssohn), with the first state titles, both dated 1840. Portraits was issued in five parts between 1840 and 1842, either on Colombier paper with tailpieces or on the smaller Imperial paper without tailpieces. Captain Harris, an officer in the East India Company's Bombay Engineers, was invalided to the Cape for two years, 1835-7. In 1836, after conferring with Dr. Andrew Smith, he and Richard Williamson set off from Algoa Bay, by way of Somerset and the Orange River and travelled in a north-easterly direction until they reached the kraals of the famous Matabele chief Moselikatze. He proved friendly and allowed them to return via a previously closed route. The first published account of the journey appeared in Bombay in 1838 (Narrative of an Expedition in Southern Africa, 8°, with a map and 4 plates); encouraged by the favourable response, he went on to publish the present work which was based around his sketches of the game and wild animals he encountered on his travels. Mendelssohn I, p.688; Tooley 247; Abbey Travel 335; Nissen ZBI 1843; Schwerdt I, p.231.

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