First edition. With portrait frontispiece and 4 plates. The autobiography of explorer and travel writer Harry De Windt.

8vo., original cloth lettered in gilt on spine and upper board. Spine slightly darkened otherwise a very good copy.

Harry de Windt (1856-1933) was a man who, by any standards, was a personality, a marked presence in the world of Victorian and Edwardian literature and social life. He was a member of the literary circle around Oscar Wilde and his friend and lover, Bosie (Lord Alfred Douglas); he was active in the world of the turf; and he travelled - he took on dangerous journeys with relish, crossing vast tracts of the British and Russian empires for the sheer thrill of it. This book traces his life and adventures, at home and abroad, and also gives an account of his early work on military service in Sarawak, Malaysia, his expert knowledge of the Russian prison system, and his later Great War role running a POW camp.

Harry de Windt was brother to the Ranee of Sarawak and fought against rebels there in his early career. He visited the penal colony on the Russian island of Sakhalin close to the same time that Anton Chekhov went there. He also appeared as a witness in the trial for libel of Lord Alfred Douglas.