Joseph Baynes. Pioneer

Large 8vo; original brown boards with lettering to spine and upper cover; pictorial dustwrapper, housed in removable protector; endpaper maps; pp. (xiv) + 331, incl. index; monochrome photographic plates. Dustwrapper a little rubbed, and sunned on spine panel; some foxing to edges. Very good condition. "Joseph Baynes is, perhaps, one of the most neglected figures in South African history. This book tells the fascinating story of a most remarkable man of Scottish ancestry, scion of a noble family and descended from King Donald Bane of Scotland; of how, as a Byrne settler, a young lad of eight, he came out to this country in 1850; of how he founded and built up a magnificent estate of close on 10 000 hectares, which on his death he left as a gift to the people of South Africa; of his long fight to convince the authorities that dipping was the answer to East Coast Fever, thereby saving South Africa from disaster; of his sensational Dairy enterprise, spanning the length and breadth of the country; and of his work as Member of Parliament, Cabinet Minister, and originator of the Congella harbour. But the book is more than this. It gives at the same time a brilliant picture of Victorian social and political life in Natal in the latter half of the 19th century, a period about which little has so far been written.".…