Photography & Ephemera

HAGGARD, Sir Henry Rider (1856-1925). Cetywayo and His White Neighbours. London: Trubner & Co., 1882. FIRST EDITION OF RARE WORK. 8vo. Publisher’s green cloth boards with stamped gilt lettering. Rubbing to boards. Foxing. Provenance: Walter Gurney (bookplate). First full-length published work by Haggard. One of only 750 first edition copies printed. H. Rider Haggard began writing Cetywayo and His White Neighbours while studying for the Bar in 1881. The book tells the story of Cetywayo, ruler of the Zulu Kingdom from 1873-1879. Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century the British established numerous colonies bordering native African kingdoms, the Zulu among them. After diamonds were discovered nearby British territorial governors hatched a scheme to create a new confederation in South Africa, with a ruling class of whites who would govern the larger native African population. Cetywayo was considered to be one of the greatest obstacles to this plan, as evidenced in a letter written to the 4th Earl of Carnarvon by Sir Theophilus Shepstone which calls Cetywayo “the secret hope of every petty independent chief...who feels a desire that his color shall prevail, and it will not be until this hope is destroyed that they will make up their minds to submit to the rule of civilisation.” The Anglo-Zulu War which resulted saw Cetywayo deposed and led directly to the Boer Wars, establishing the nation of South Africa on what was once Zulu and Boer land. Despite his ultimate defeat at the hands of the British Cetywayo became something of a folk hero, with Haggard himself including him as a character in three of his own novels: The Witch’s Head, Black Heart and White Heart, and Finished. Haggard sent his finished manuscript for Cetywayo and His White Neighbours off to numerous publishers but received only one offer, from Trubner and Company who offered to print 750 copies for the price of fifty pounds. The book ultimately sold only 154 copies with the remainder presumably lost, making it one of the more scarce titles of Haggard’s literary output.