African Game Trails. An Account of the African Wanderings of an American Hunter-Naturalist.

ROOSEVELT, Theodore.

$8,800.00

Item Number: 146118

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1910.

First edition of Theodore Roosevelt’s classic work. Octavo, original cloth, gilt top edge, photogravure frontispiece, illustrated, 48 plates, map of Roosevelt’s route and hunting trips in Africa. Association copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “To O.K. King with the esteem and regard of his friend Theodore Roosevelt Sept 22d 1910.” The recipient, Oscar King Davis was a journalist for the New York Times and Chicago Tribune and had a long association with Roosevelt as reporter, aide, collaborator, and friend. Roosevelt contributed a chapter to King’s 1908 biography of Taft, and king later became an aide to Roosevelt during his 1912 Bull Moose campaign. In 1925 King published Released for Publication: Some Inside Political History of Theodore Roosevelt and His Times 18989-1918. In very good condition with some light dampstaining and wear. Housed in a custom half morocco and chemise clamshell box. An exceptional association.

"One of the most famous of all big-game hunting epics, this, with its larger than life sportsmen, was almost continuously in print until the 1930s. In British East Africa, Roosevelt hunted lion and plains game on the Kapiti Plains, while, in the Bondoni hill country, he collected rhinoceros and giraffe. On Juja Farm, his son Kermit faced leopard, while Teddy bagged rhino and hippopotamus. On the Kamiti River, buffalo were taken. Near the Sotik, additional rhino and lion were hunted, with elephant bagged near Mt. Kenia. On the Guaso Nyiro, giraffe and a variety of plains game were shot. Further adventures included hunting elephant near Lake Nyanza, rhino and plains game in the Lado, and eland on the Nile. Roosevelt’s total bag was enormous even by the liberal standards of that era" (Czech, 138-39).