Marching over Africa: Letters from Victorian Soldiers (1st Edition)

Emery, Frank

ISBN 10: 0340382910 / ISBN 13: 9780340382912

Published by Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1986

About this Item

Fine condition 1st Edition/1st Printing hardcover in Fine condition dust jacket. "Africa was the scene of dozens of military campaigns during Queen Victoria's long reign, ranging from the high mountains of Abyssinia (1868) in the east to the equatorial forests of the Gold Coast (1873) in the west, and from the open veldt of South Africa (beginning in 1877) to the hot sands of the Egyptian and Sudanese deserts (after 1882). This protracted span of operations took some Victorian soldiers back to Africa time and again, each experience filled with its own characteristic blend of discomfort, disease and the risk of death in action against the Ashanti or the Zulu, the Boer or the Mahdi's dervishes. From all quarters there survive hundreds of letters written by the officers and men who took part in African wars between 1868 and 1898. They form the raw material from which Frank Emery has fashioned this book. He has tracked down many of them previously unpublished except in the pages of contemporary newspapers, lent by the relatives of men who wrote home. Their style and vividness make splendid reading. 'It looked as if all Africa was coming at us,' writes a sergeant from Omdurman in 1898. All the best known names of heroic encounter are featured in the letters, as well as others of dire disaster for the military side of British imperialism: Magdala, Isandlwana, Rorke's Drift, Majuba, Tel-el-Kebir, Khartoum, Omdurman. Frank Emery's text gives an explanatory narrative of the course of British intervention in Africa, part of which was the use of military force, with the authority he showed so well in his earlier book, The Red Soldier." Book and dust jacket are both in virtually flawless As-New condition and will be bubble-wrapped to protect the corners and shipped in a sturdy box to ensure safe delivery. Seller Inventory # ABRP64

Bibliographic Details

Title: Marching over Africa: Letters from Victorian...

Publisher: Hodder and Stoughton, London

Publication Date: 1986

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: As New

Dust Jacket Condition: As New

Edition: 1st Edition

About this title

Synopsis:

Very Good, FIRST EDITION, HODDER & STOUGHTON, LONDON, 1986 A very good, clean and sound copy in dark brown cloth boards, label to lower corner of ffep, with a very good dust jacket. DJ in a clear protective wrapper. Frank Emery. 204 p., ill.