This small but dense guide book to South and East Africa was produced annually for the Union Castle Mail Steamship Company. It was a publishing success. Here was a happy marriage of publishing, tourism promotion and publicity for the sale of bookings for the sea voyage to Africa. For many it was an adventure of a lifetime; for others a ticket to immigration and taking up a new life in what was still seen as a British colony in Africa (South Africa, Rhodesia or Kenya). This was the Lonely Planet or Insight Guide of its day. I love the cover with the decorative palm trees – it is an immediate icon of exotic Africa – a hint of penetrating the 'dark continent' but by 1914 railways had made Africa accessible to the affluent touring class – the men and women of independent means.
Guide Cover
The title said it all - the readership were the tourists planning holidays of up to six months, the sportsmen going in search of hunting wild game, the invalids in search of sunshine and a dry climate to recover from consumption (tuberculosis) and the settlers who were likely to come to purchase a farm or take up a profession in a growing town. South Africa and the hinterland was seen...
