< Back

Seabrook, William.
Jungle Ways.
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York;
Date of Publication: 1931
Stock Code: 15448
Signed limited edition of 315 copies only (the limitation page states only 274 were offered for sale), of which this is number 138. Octavo, pp., [viii], 308, plus tissue-captioned frontispiece, map, 32 full-page photographs, and 8 ‘extra’ tissue-captioned photographic plates. Printed on laid paper. Publisher’s maroon cloth over cream cloth back; titled in gilt to maroon cloth spine label; white end-papers. Edges untrimmed. Signed ‘WB Seabrook’ to limitation page.Stamp of the ‘Carleton Heights School Ottawa’ to the half-title. Minor shelf-wear to corners; label peeling; binding otherwise strong and square. Contents clean and bright. An excellent copy. A superb copy of William Seabrook’s controversial and startling account of his experience of ritual cannibalism in West Africa. A classic narrative of colonial adventure, Seabrook writes that he eventually became the ‘savage’ that so many white writers had sought out. His claim to having participated in cannibalism with a West African tribe was later shown to be a fabulation. The truth is perhaps more shocking. Challenged on the authenticity of his account on his journey home, Seabrook endeavoured to do in Paris what he’d failed to do in Africa, and persuaded a medical intern at the Sorbonne to allow him to eat the flesh of a man killed by accident (Phillips, 401). This limited edition was published the same year as the first. The additional plates are remarkable close-up photographs of the subjects of Seabrook’s narrative, printed here for the first time. £225.00