Leaves from a Missionary's Notebook.

[London]: Secker and Warburg. 1929.

Number 43 of 125 copies printed on vellum. 268x170mm. Unpaginated. Illustrated dustjacket with some damage and a tear (with loss) to the top edge of the front cover and about 40mm missing from the foot of the spine and 10mm from the top but it is rare to find this book with a pristine jacket. Beefy sailors, topless natives, a callow young Englishman for whom "the tropics are hot in more senses than one" - one imagines that Tennant had great fun writing and drawing this bizarre little book which would have been scandalous when it first appeared. It is still scandalous today although for different reasons, for if one were looking to decolonise one's library, this book would be the first off the shelf. It aims at Ronald Firbank but lands somewhere near Benny Hill.