ca. 1893. 4to., publisher’s pale green card wrappers with dark green buckram spine, gold lettering and ornamentation to front wrapper, advertisement to rear, pp. 113. Profusely illustrated mainly with black-and-white photographs of Johannesburg. The first half of the volume contains 2 essays: ‘Johannesburg: Its Rise and Progress’ and ‘The Streets of the Golden City, and Its Public and Other Notable Buildings’, while the second half is a Commercial Review of the city’s mercantile establishments, with almost every entry photographed and described. An extremely rare document of major importance to South African history, Pictorial Johannesburg (ca. 1893) is a historical and commercial review of the settlement not yet a decade after its naming and foundation in 1886, and predating the outbreak of the Second Boer War by just a few years. The purpose of the publication was to promote Johannesburg as a commercial and mercantile centre, to show pictorially that the city was thriving, no doubt to attract business and further settlement. The book contains numerous advertisements in addition to the photographic and descriptive entries of the city’s main businesses. Among these is an advertisement for Henry Longland, the author himself, as an “Advertising Agent, publisher of the Johannesburg and Pretoria directories for 1892”. While the city was still in its earliest stages of development, Longland appears to have been one of Johannesburg’s main publicists, publishing also “Progressive Johannesburg. Illustrated. A retrospect of eight years’ progress,” another photographic promotional brochure similar to that here listed, also highlighting the young city’s mercantile prospects. Ex library with stamp to title page. Wrappers rubbed and marked, binding corners worn, spine tender, slight offsetting to title page, pages slightly browned; otherwise good.
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