'In The Wilds Of Africa'

'In The Wilds of Africa' by W. H. G. Kingston (1814-1880) is the oldest book I own. It doesn't have a print date but....

....a little research on the internet proves that it was first published in 1871 and that my copy is not, sadly, a first edition.

Kingston was a prolific writer of adventure books for boys set in a variety of parts of the world but there is no evidence he ever travelled in Africa. Almost all the five colour plates are of confrontations with wild animals which seem to accept without resistance that they are about to be killed.

On the flyleaf is my name, written in my mother's hand, below that of Helen G. Liddell, my mother's cousin whom we always called 'Bay'. Bay was born in 1899 so she was eleven when she had the book whereas I'm fairly certain I was younger when I was given it. I have no idea how the book passed from Bay's possession to mine except that she might have given it to me on one of our leaves in England: she and my mother were very close, so would have met up every time we were 'home'.

I can't remember the book's story except that it tells a fictional first-hand account of a journey through Africa in which the hero shoots just about anything that is worth shooting, has all the adventures that one should have on an African safari, and meets a wide selection of very good and very bad people. I do remember loving it because it described the Africa of my imagination.

Perhaps it was that I was so proud of owning the book that my autograph is scrawled inside the back cover, or perhaps it was to prove that I had actually read it from cover to cover.