David Livingstone: The Great Missionary Explorer.

[LIVINGSTONE, David].

$850.00

Item Number: 124055

New York: The Walter Scott Publishing Co., Ltd, n.d. c. 1908.

Finely bound example of this anonymous work on the life of David Livingstone. Octavo, bound in full morocco with gilt titles and tooling to the spine in six compartments within raised gilt bands, gilt ruling to the front and rear panels, gilt turn-ins and inner dentelles, marbled endpapers, all edges marbled, frontispiece. In near fine condition. Bookplate. A fine example of early 20th century binding.

Scottish physician, Congregationalist, and pioneer Christian missionary, and explorer of Africa, David Livingstone was one of the most popular British heroes of the late 19th-century Victorian era. Livingstone's fame as an explorer and his obsession with learning the sources of the Nile River was founded on the belief that if he could solve that age-old mystery, his fame would give him the influence to end the East African Arab–Swahili slave trade. His subsequent exploration of the central African watershed was the culmination of the classic period of European geographical discovery and colonial penetration of Africa. At the same time, his missionary travels, "disappearance", and eventual death in Africa‍ ‌led to the founding of several major central African Christian missionary initiatives carried forward in the era of the European "Scramble for Africa".