“FROWNING AND FIERCENESS PROVE NOT MANLINESS”

BURTON, Richard F. Wit and Wisdom from West Africa; or, A Book of Proverbial Philosophy, Idioms, Enigmas, and Laconisms. London: Tinsley Brothers, 1865. Octavo, modern three-quarter brown calf, raised bands, red morocco spine label, marbled boards and edges. $3200.

First edition of Burton’s collected African folk wisdom and his own observations from his three years of travels in West Africa, attractively bound.

"Burton's life abounds in strange, mysterious, dark passages, but the three years in West Africa—three years that must have seemed like an eternity of hell—are among the strangest. Three years in a stinking, malarial, undeveloped, miasmic, ignorant, nasty backwater!… That he wrote a lot of books—nine fat volumes—during those three years is a matter of record, books that are pedantically, obsessively entranced with facts, with details, with the layering up of information. As virtually always, any single one of them would have been enough to make another man's reputation, to ensure a safe berth in a university or a foreign office" (Rice, 481). Burton's Wit and Wisdom "comprises material which heretofore existed only in oral form… The book collect proverbs from seven languages (Wolof, Kanuri, Ojim, Ga Yoruba, Efik and Fan) together with miscellaneous other colloquialisms, idioms and the like" (Casada 71). "This is a very interesting work… rare, especially if in good condition" (Penzer). Penzer, 75.

Minor foxing to first several and last several leaves. Attractive modern binding fine.