Major Ricketts. Narrative of the Ashantee War: with a View of the Present State of the Colony of Sierra Leone. L...

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Only Surviving Officer of the Ashantee War

Major Ricketts. Narrative of the Ashantee War: with a View of the Present State of the Colony of Sierra Leone. London: Simpkin and Marshall, 1831.

First edition. Octavo. 221 pages. Engraved frontispiece, map, two folding illustrated plates, errata sheet.

Cloth backstrip over paper boards. Paper title label to spine. Binding slightly cocked. Some soiling. Hinges cracked, but binding tight. Bookplate of previous owner on front pastedown. Overall, a very good copy.

Major Ricketts had first-hand experience in what came to be known as the First Anglo-Ashanti War. In the preface he writes (in the third person) that "had not Providence left him the only surviving officer who witnessed most of the events on the Gold Coast, he would not have produced these pages, which are now published only from a sense of public duty." From the Professor John Ralph Willis Collection of Rare Africana.