The African Sketch-Book, in two volumes

London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1873. Hardcover. Good. Ex-library (non-circulating). Publisher's green cloth boards decoratively stamped in gilt and black on spine and front cover. Call number on spines. Labels on front pastedowns; no pockets. Each volume has pinhole library stamps on the frontispiece, title-page, and each of the illustrated plates/maps. Complete plates: ten illustrations and twelve maps (2 color, 3 fold-outs); several in-text illustrations. 19.4 x 13.6 cm. Octavo. pp. Vol. I: x, 483. Vol. II: vi, 529, plus [6] advertising. Placed in archival mylar sleeves with a small, loose slip of acid-free paper to mask the call number. In his African Sketch-Book, Reade compiled a variety of materials with the intention of illustrating both African life and his experiences. He includes a recapitulation of his travels in Equatorial Africa, Angola, and Senegambia during 1862 and 1863; essays on the slave trade, African exploration, and the progress of Islam in Western Africa; an detailed record of his most recent travels with the Swanzy Expedition in west Africa; and eleven fictional tales based on his studies and experiences in Africa which portray the manners and customs of the native peoples. William Winwood Reade (1838-1875) was a British historian, explorer, novelist, and philosopher. He made three expeditions in Africa, 1862-63, 1868-70, and 1873-74. Reade engaged in correspondence with Charles Darwin, who incorporated some of Reade's information in The Descent of Man (1871). Reade's 1872 work, The Martyrdom of Man, was highly regarded and received lauds from W. E. B. Du Bois, Cecil Rhodes, H. G. Wells, Winston Churchill, A. A. Milne and, even, Sherlock Holmes. The novelist Charles Reade was his uncle. These volumes come from the collection of John Wilson (c. 1826-1900), an Irish-born pioneer merchant and book collector of Portland, Oregon. His collection was considered to be one of the finest on the west coast and was bequeathed to the Portland public library in 1900.