Land of Elephants. Big-Game Hunting in Kenya, Tanganyika and Uganda.

London: Putnam,, 1935. First edition in English, first impression, inscribed from one big-game hunter to another on the front free endpaper, "To Mrs H. Lerner, the slayer of Lions, from a Boer - Wm P. Steenkamp Jr. Capetown 14/4/37". A South African MP from 1929, Steenkamp was known as the "Lion of the North-West" for his fiery oratory. Together with her husband, Michael, Lerner (1902-1979) hunted across the globe in the 1930s and 1940s. Friends of Ernest Hemingway, they shared with him an interest not only in big-game but also fishing, and they founded the International Game Fish Association in 1939. According to the association's website, Helen, "this trailblazing angler and marine scientist, made history as the first woman to reel in a bluefin tuna off the European continent, the inaugural angler to catch nine tuna in a single year, and the pioneer in catching a broadbill in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans". Photographs of their 1936-37 Africa safari, including images of Lerner with her lion trophies, are held by the University of Calgary. By the time he died, Willem Petrus Steenkamp (1879-1956) "had been many things: a spell-binding preacher who was invited no less than 58 times to minister elsewhere – surely still a record – an equally spell-binding political orator; a respected naturalist; a best-selling author; an expert on Arabian horses; twice a political prisoner; a big-game hunter and world traveller; such a foe of Nazism that he was willing to sacrifice his political career to combat it, [and] a fighter for the Afrikaans language who nevertheless spoke, wrote and enjoyed fluent English" ("The Lion"). The author (1898-1967), a Hungarian nobleman, hunted elephant in Kenya in the Kitui Forest and along the course of the Tiva River. "He also hunted bongo near Mt. Kenya, kudu along the northern reaches of Lake Rudolf, leopard on the northern Guaso Nyiro and lion on the Serengeti Plain. Széchenyi wrote other African hunting books which still await translation" (Czech). This account was published in Hungarian in 1934. Octavo. Half-tone frontispiece after photograph of author, 94 half-tone plates, map in text. Original black cloth, spine lettered in gilt. Extremities rubbed, spine ends beginning to split, edges foxed, plates clean: a very good copy. "The Lion of the North-West", Ancestors Research South Africa, available online.