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Cobbold, Lady Evelyn.
Kenya the Land of Illusion.
Publisher: John Murray, Albermarle Street, W., London;
Date of Publication: 1935
Stock Code: 14784
Octavo, pp., ix, 236, [2] advertisements, plus frontispiece. Complete with 17 full-page photographic plates, 1 full-page map, and 2 pages of double-plates. Publisher’s original blue cloth, lioness black-stamped to upper board, titled to spine. Bookplate of one Marjorie Warner to front free end-paper. Cream dust-jacket, titled and blurbed to upper panel, publisher’s advertisements to lower panel. Dust-jacket clipped to upper flap (although not price-clipped), lightly foxed, slight loss to tips of spine-panel. Light shelf-wear to cloth. Contents very occasionally lightly foxed to edges. A very good copy in like jacket. Zainab Cobbold (a.k.a Lady Evelyn Cobbold) (1867-1963) was a Scottish travel writer who converted to Islam in 1915, and became the first Muslim woman born in Britain to undertake the pilgrimage to Mecca.
Cobbold published three books: Wayfarers in the Libyan Desert (1912), Pilgrimage to Mecca (1934), and this volume, which describes her travels through Egypt, Sudan, Uganda, Kenya and Somalia. Cobbold describes her meetings with Masai Warriors, a flight over Kilimanjaro, a series of safaris, and a visit to the Kakamega goldfields. Cobbold travelled widely all of her life, spoke and wrote Arabic fluently and was obviously quite a remarkable women. Rare, especially so in the dust-jacket. £350.00