A PRESENTATION COPY OF THE SIGNED LIMITED EDITION OF DYER AND KUHN’S BOOK,
ADDITIONALLY INSCRIBED ‘WITH THE AUTHOR’S REGARDS ANTHONY DYER’
DYER, Anthony Doughty Gordon and Robert (‘Bob’) Frederick KUHN (artist). The Big Five. Agoura, CA: Trophy Room Books, 1996.
Quarto (279 x 214mm), pp. xvii (limitation statement, verso blank, half-title, illustrations, title, colophon, dedication, illustrations, contents, verso blank, colour-printed plate, foreword), [1 (blank)], [2 (colour-printed plate)], 204, [6 (blank ll.)]. 6 colour-printed plates after Kuhn (integral to the text), and numerous monochrome illustrations after Kuhn and Henry Henley in the text. Half-tone photographic illustrations after G.H. Anderson, Dyer, Kuhn, et al. Original green boards, spine lettered and decorated in gilt, illustrated endpapers, dustwrapper with illustration after Kuhn on upper panel. (Dustwrapper with some minor creasing at edges and fading on spine.) A very good copy. Provenance: Quentin George Keynes FRGS (1921-2003).
Second, revised edition, no. 520 of 1,000 copies signed by Dyer and Kuhn, and additionally inscribed ‘with the author’s regards Anthony Dyer’ on the half-title. The Kenyan hunter, ranch manager, and writer Anthony Dyer (1926-2018) worked as a professional hunter until he retired in 1961 and became a ranch manager, while serving as President of the East African Professional Hunters’ Association from 1965 to 1977. Dyer met the American wildlife artist Bob Kuhn (1920-2007) in 1956 and the two men became firm friends, publishing Classic African Animals: The Big Five, with text by Dyer and six colour paintings by Kuhn, in 1973. The first edition was well-received and the New York Times praised it as ‘a magnificent tribute to the elephant, the lion, the leopard, the cape buffalo and the rhinoceros. Bob Kuhn, the book’s artist, is one of America’s top wildlife painters, and Tony Dyer, the author, who is presently farming in the Kenya highlands, writes superbly and with great sensitivity of the animals he knows well. This book is not for the big‐game hunter alone although all big‐game hunters should read it, but for all who wish a deeper understanding of the five magnificent animals and their environment’ (1 November 1973, p. 91).
The present edition retains Kuhn’s original illustrations, but has a revised and updated text by Dyer, who explains in his foreword that ‘“The Big Five” is the collective term we use for the elephant, rhino, buffalo, lion and leopard. This book is about these animals as they live in Africa in the year 1996’ (p. xiii). This edition also includes a new ‘Appendix’ (pp, 157-204), with illustrations by Henry Henley. This copy was previously in the noted collection of the explorer, wildlife photographer and film-maker, and bibliophile Quentin Keynes, who travelled extensively in Africa throughout the second half of the twentieth century, and collected a remarkable library of books and manuscripts relating to the exploration and natural history of Africa.
£95
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