£200 - £300
(South Sea Islands) Julius L. Brenchley Jottings During The Cruise of HMS Curacoa Among the South Sea Islands in 1865 First edition, original green cloth with gilt tooled device to front board and gilt lettering to spine, light spotting to cloth but generally vg, inner front joint slightly cracked, spotting and toning to prelims, staining to fore edge starting at v and diminishing to p.67 not affecting text, spotting to edge of text block and sporadically, good to vg text block, xvi, pp.487, collated complete, Longmans, Green & Co, London, 1873. This volume has particularly fine text engravings depicting aspects of daily life of the South Sea Islanders: individual portraits of the King and Queen of Tonga, a Samoan chief; ear, nose and neck ornaments; native art and architecture. The 50 natural history plates (many hand coloured) include the following: 21 Bird plates with 27 figures; 4 Reptile plates with 9 figures; 10 Fish plates with 12 figures; 7 Shell plates with 32 figures; 8 Insect plates with 27 figures. From the library of Guy Slatter, whose lifelong passion for island life began in childhood with an interest in Pitcairn. After studying at Oxford and working for the BBC, he spent two years in the 1960s setting up a radio station in the Kiribati Islands. His deep connection to the Pacific led to many return visits, including work for a German museum, where he facilitated the export of an ethnic house for an exhibition. A dedicated scholar of Pacific history and culture, he built his collection of books over many years through a dealer in York and even translated two German works into English: The Material Culture of Kiribati and The Material Culture of Tuvalu.
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