xvii, [1], 551 + [1] ad pp. With 16 photogravure plates, printed tissue guards; folding facsimile; folding color map. 10¼x7¼, original full green levant morocco ruled in gilt, map of Africa stamped on front cover with legend "Bula-Matari", spine lettered in gilt, raised bands, gilt-ruled turn-ins, top edge gilt, others untrimmed. No. 26 of 250 copies. First Edition.
Deluxe edition of the life of the great explorer of Africa, signed by Dorothy Stanley on the limitation-page. Signed presentation card from Dorothy Stanley, inscribed by her "Sir William Lever. bart., Oc., from Dorothy Stanley, April 1917" in small envelope affixed to front flyleaf; Baron Leverhulme's engraved armorial bookplate, featuring two elephants, a bugle and a cock, is mounted on the facing leaf (front free endpaper verso). William Hesketh Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme, to whom the book was presented by Stanley's Widow, was the founder of the Lever Brothers soap manufacturing company, and his use of forced labor to harvest palm oil in the Bengian Congo, starting in 1911, was, even at the time, criticized.