Sparks first

Buy First Drafts, South African History in the Making - Allister Sparks for R80.00

About the product 1st English-language edition. 8vo; original orange cloth, lettered in black on spine; pictorial dustwrapper; pp. viii + 124 + (ii). Dustwrapper a little edgeworn, sunned on spine panel, with trace of foxing; earlier owner's name signed in pencil on front free endpaper; sporadic foxing. Good to very good condition."This work, mainly about the habits of and adventures with baboons, is a translation of articles written in Afrikaans by the late Eugène Nielen Marais (the author of The Soul of the White Ant). The articles appeared originally in Die Vaderland. Subsequently collected and arranged by Dr. M. S. B. Kritzinger, they were published in book form under the title Burgers van die Berge, by J. L. van Schaik Ltd., of Pretoria. These chapters in popular vein are but sparks from the anvil on which the author had been fashioning for years a more detailed and scientific work, The Soul of the Ape, the final manuscript of which has unfortunately been lost. A small portion of the first draft of The Soul of the Ape has, however, been included."