First edition of Lodges in the Wilderness by W. C. Scully (1915).
The beautiful design on the cover of this book, a first edition of Lodges in the Wilderness by W. C. Scully, is not printed on a dust jacket, but applied directly to the cloth binding. While it’s normal for publishers to use colour paints to apply the titles to cloth-bound books, it’s less common to see large multi-colour designs produced in this way, particularly with such delicate tones. It’s even less common for them to remain in pristine condition; normally the pigments are rubbed and chipped off, or show the effects of soiling and sun exposure. This copy, however, is in stunning condition.
The author, William Charles Scully (1855–1943), was a prolific South African writer known for his sympathy with the native people of the region. His first volume of short stories, Kafir Stories (1895) is “probably the earliest collection of short stories written by any white man in which all of the heroes are black men”*. The volume pictured above is the story of a journey across a “great waterless desert” undertaken by the author during the 1890s when he was Special Magistrate for the Northern Border of the Cape Colony. In an attempt to connect the book with current events of the Boer War, the publisher has tipped-in a small ticket at the title page reading, “General Botha’s army is operating in the neighbourhood of the Great Waterless Desert dealt with in this book. It forms the great problem of the campaign”.
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*Marquard, Jean. “W. C. Scully: South African Pioneer”. Institute for the Study of English in Africa. January, 1979.
