Christie’s roundel
Lot 59

DAVID LIVINGSTONE (1813-1873)

Closed27 September 2007

Price Realised

GBP 1,250

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DAVID LIVINGSTONE (1813-1873)

Autograph letter signed ('David Livingstone') to an unidentified recipient (possibly Robert Cooke, John Murray's partner), Newstead Abbey, 19 April 1865, 3½ page, 8vo, on a bifolium.

THE COMPLETION OF THE ZAMBESI AND ITS TRIBUTARIES. Livingstone has received the 'cuts [engravings] and queries', and returns them with further contributions for pages 201-233. 'The cut in pencil will do very well. I hope I have not injured it by putting inside the proofs'. He sends the contents list, 'but the chapters might be smaller than I have made them with advantage'; the manuscript was finished on the 16 April: 'Agnes wrote a big Finis'. A postscript refers humorously to some suggested corrections on 'transference of colour and the effects which ensue when old batchlors [sic] marry young wives'.

Livingstone wrote much of his Narrative of an expedition to the Zambesi and its Tributaries whilst staying at Newstead Abbey, the home of William Webb, a big-game enthusiast he had met in Bechuanaland -- 'among the happiest [days] of his life' (Jeal, p.281). The work itself considerably understated the difficulties and tensions of the Zambesi expedition, while vehemently attacking the Portuguese for its failures.