The Finding of Dr. Livingstone by H.M. Stanley first enlarged edition 1873

London: John Camden Hotten (1873)
 
8vo., pictorial brown cloth by the publisher with an lined black border to the upper board and the same design to the lower board, with a fantastic gilt motif in the centre of an elephant and other wildlife underneath a tree; with gilt lettering to the spine and a wonderful motif of a giraffe; all edges gilt; pale yellow endpapers; illustrated frontispiece showing Livingstone lost in the marshes, title vignette of someone paddling downstream and a further 16 full page engravings; pp viii, 1-328; a very good copy, the cloth with a faded patch and stain to the front cover; some light rubbing including a tiny chip to the lower board, spine compressions, and bumps/creases to corners; spine with marginal darkening; prelims with very light spots; previous owner's name and address in pencil to the back free end paper; overall a very good copy.  
 
John Camden Hotten was a notoriously controversial victorian publisher, dabbling in pornography and smut, along with salacious titles such as a dictionary of vulgar words. He was also a bookseller and the address on the front of this book, this being 74 & 75 Piccadilly was the Hotten bookshop. He spent some time in the US previously and had contacts over there in publishing, and so when the Herald offered him the chance to publish Henry Morton Stanley's letters in full to the British public, he jumped at the chance. The Herald had been reporting extensively on Stanley's endeavours to find Dr Livingstone, and these reports had made their way to the British Press too. Extracts, pictures were being published on a daily basis - but not the full letters. 
 
He would first of all produce an ephemeral pamphlet, and managed to publish this within a few weeks of the news breaking of Stanley's feats in 1872. The pamphlet sold out quickly, such was the demand from the british public to find out all the detail about what happened.
 
So, Hotten decided to go again, this time bigger, bolder - enlarged! He would reprint the letters and same format as his pamphlet but would this time add Dr Livingstone's version of events and provide a more vivid account, by commissioning and then using 16 engravings. The result was this enlarged edition that he managed to published in the spring of 1873. By this stage, the public had received updates in the news, his pamphlet and then Henry Stanley's account of what happened in his first published works "how I found Livingstone". But it didn't put him off, and it didn't put the public off from buying it either. 
 
The enlarged edition is scarce with none for sale in commerce at present. Both the Hotten pamphlet and this enlarged edition are rarities in relation to how the story unfolded in the UK with Hotten claiming throughout that he was the first to publish the Stanley letters in full in this country.