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Seabrook, William.
The White Monk of Timbuctoo.
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York;
Date of Publication: 1934
Stock Code: 15451
First edition. Octavo, pp., xii, 279, [1], plus black-and-white photographic frontispiece and 28 photographs on plates, as called for. Publisher’s original scarlet cloth; titled in gilt to spine. In the original pictorial dust-jacket. Former ownership inscription of one ‘Edgar W. Wilson /Dec 25th 1934’ to front free end-paper. Jacket price-clipped; small sticker to corner of lower flap; minor nicks to head and tail of spine panel; jacket otherwise bright and rather fresh. Binding strong and square, the cloth and gilt bright. Top edge a little dusty; light even toning to contents; text-block otherwise clean and in good order. A near-fine copy in like jacket. An excellent copy of writer, explorer and erstwhile cannibal William Seabrook’s (1884-1945) biography of Père Yakouba. Yakouba was a white French Catholic missionary who accompanied the first French infantry column to Timbuktu in 1895. Nearly appointed Bishop of Sudan, Yakouba gave up his European customs, married a local woman, and became the patriarchal father of a West African tribe. Seabrook initially met Yakouba when researching ‘Jungle Ways’ (1931) in the 1920s. This book is a considerable expansion of Yakouba’s brief appearance in ‘Jungle Ways’, drawn from Seabrooks extensive documentary and personal research it is also considered semi-autobiographical. Copies in the original 1934 dust-jacket are rare. £150.00