Travels in the interior parts of Africa, from the Cape of Good Hope to Morocco, through Caffraria, the Kingdoms of Mataman, Angola, Bahahara, and From thence across the Great Desart of Sahara, and The Northern Parts of Barbary [...]

Full title: Travels in the interior parts of Africa, from the Cape of Good Hope to Morocco, through Caffraria, the Kingdoms of Mataman, Angola, Bahahara, and From thence across the Great Desart of Sahara, and The Northern Parts of Barbary. Performed during the years 1781 and 1797. By Christian Frederic Damberger. Translated from the German, And Embellished with Three Coloured Plates, and a Correct Map.

12mo. ff. [2] (blank), [1] (plates), pp. v, [1], [1] (folded map), 390, [4] (blank), ff. [2] (plates). Signatures: a3 B-R12 S3. Calf. Gilt boards and spine with black lettering panel. Signature on title page. Colored frontispiece, 2 colored plates, Goldbach’s folding map titled: "A map of Africa for C.F. Damberger's Travels; laid down according to Major Rennell's last map of North Africa, Forster's of South Africa, Arrowsmith's Map of the World, D'Anville Vaugondy &c. by C.F. Goldbach” with imprint ‘Published Decr 30th. 1800 by Longman & Rees Paternoster Row’, and ‘Neele Sculp. Strand,’ with "An explanation of the map", signed C.F. Goldbach. Leipsic, Oct. 11, 1800 on p. 387-390. Three handcolored plates, apparently copied, with some variation, from the edition printed for Richard Phillips (see Bib# 4103016/Fr# 1422 in this collection).

This is an English translation from the German of the third of three fictitious first-person travelogues, all by the mysterious hack and possibly pseudonymous Zacharias Taurinius, issued under different names and for three Leipzig publishers between 1799 and 1801 (see Bib# 4103014/Fr# 1419, Bib# 491157/Fr# 1420, and Bib# 4103015/Fr# 1421).

The last Taurinius travel fiction was published under the nom de plume Christian Friedrich Damberger. ‘Damberger’, supposedly a Dutchman, and begins with excursions in Germany, France, and Great Britain, followed by highly realistic and temporarily convincing travels in unexplored central Africa, complete with colored plates and detailed semi-imaginary maps. This became an instant critical and popular success, with rapid-fire translations into French and, like this one, into English, and no fewer than seven differing English, Scottish, Irish, and American versions published within its first year, until scholars in Jena and Göttingen exposed the evident ‘plagiarisms’ it contained from many sources, including the very recent ‘Schroedter’ and ‘Taurinius’ volumes. A flurry of periodical articles and a denunciatory pamphlet followed (London, 1801), and in Leipzig the three deceived publishers met and discovered that their three submitted manuscripts were in one and the same hand. ‘Taurinius’ cheerfully confessed (one Junge, a certain ‘master of arts’ in Wittenberg, where Taurinius had ostensibly practiced as a printer, was mooted as the real forger), and no more is heard of either. For a good account of the hoax, for a long time a credited source of information about the Dark Continent, see R. J. Howgego, Encyclopedia of exploration: invented and apocryphal narratives of travel. Potts Point, New South Wales, 2013, D2(b).

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