Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa;: including a Sketch of Sixteen Years' Residence in the Interior of Africa, and a Journey from the Cape of Good Hope to Loanda on the West Coast; thence across the Continent, down the River Zambezi, to the Eastern Ocean.

London: John Murray,, 1857. It surpasses in interest the most exciting narratives of modern travel and adventure First edition. Missionary Travels is one of the emblematic accounts of African exploration in the 19th century and the foundation of the Livingstone legend. He "both embodied and transcended the nineteenth-century tension between religion and science, and it was this which accounted for the scale and complexity of his career in Africa" (ODNB). The book describes the first of his three major expeditions, "in which he followed the Zambezi, discovering Victoria Falls in the process, as well as the Shire and Ruyuma rivers, ranging from Angola in the west to Mozambique in the east... During these years he explored vast regions of central Africa" (PMM). This is Bradlow's variant I: the frontispiece and plate facing page 66 are tinted lithographs by West, and the plate facing page 225 is a black and white lithograph from a sketch by Bell; the extra leaf after page 8 is absent. As many as 11 variants of the first edition are known and a reliable order of precedence has never been established: it is now accepted that "the only thing that can be said with certainty is that the issue with the extra leaf numbered 8* and 8+ is not the first issue" (Bradlow). The extra leaf contains information on Moffat's mission at Kuruman and on Livingstone's marriage and the upbringing of his children. Provenance: with the armorial bookplate of Colonel William O'Neill on the front pastedown. Born in Ireland, O'Neill (1800-1869) served with the 83rd (County of Dublin) Regiment of Foot during the Peninsular War, for which he was awarded a war medal and eight clasps. He later served during the Third Kandyan War in Ceylon. Octavo. Original moderate brown sand-grain cloth, spine lettered gilt, spine and boards panelled in blind, pink surface-paper endpapers, top and fore-edge uncut. Folding tinted lithographed frontispiece, engraved portrait of Livingstone, 2 lithographed and 20 wood-engraved plates, folding geological cross section, 2 folding maps (1 in endpocket), wood engravings in the text; 8 pp. publisher's advertisements at end. Contemporary and recent bookseller's tickets on front pastedown. A few marks to cloth, binding and inner hinges expertly repaired, endpapers discoloured, minor repair to stub of folding map. A very good copy with cloth bright. Abbey, Travel 347; Howgego IV L39; Mendelssohn I, p. 908; Printing and the Mind of Man 341; SABIB III, p. 136. F. R. Bradlow, "The Variants of the 1857 edition", Livingstone 1873-1973, 1973.