The head-hunters of Christabel : a tale of adventure in the South Seas

/ by Alfred Penny … Illustrated by Harold Pittard. London : Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, [1903]. Octavo (200 x 130 mm), publisher’s pictorial cloth (boards with small amount of flecking), spine with vignette illustration and gilt lettering; first blank stamped ‘REVIEW COPY, With Secretary’s Compliments’; pp. 301, 16 (publisher’s ads.), illustrated with 4 plates (including frontispiece); edges with light spotting; binding firm, a couple of leaves with bent top corners but otherwise internally very good, a nice copy.

Children’s adventure story set in the Solomon Islands, written by missionary Rev. Alfred Penny. (The Christabel of the title is a corruption of San Cristóbal, the island now known as Makira).

‘(Rev) Alfred Penny (1845-1934) was born in Warwickshire in 1845, educated at Rugby and Cambridge and ordained as a priest in 1869. He joined the Anglican Melanesian Mission at Norfolk Island (1875 to 1878). Stationed at Boli, Gela in Solomon Islands from 1878, Penny worked founding schools in Gela and Isabel islands, lived in Santa Cruz and published an account of his observations Ten Years in Melanesia on his return to England in 1888 and The Head-hunters of Christobal (1903). He served for a number of years as rector of the Collegiate Church of St. Peter, Wolverhampton, diocese of Lichfield, and died 1934. (from: Biographical Summaries for Anglican Clergy). Penny gave a collection of 4 religious artefacts from Gela to the British Museum in 1920 (Oc.1920,0313) and 7 more artefacts acquired by him, including several religious relics, were given by the Melanesian Mission in 1939 (Oc1939,10.1 to 7).’ (British Museum)