[Antoninou Liberalis Metamorphoseon Synagoge]. ANTONINUS (Liberalis).

SCHOOL PRIZE TO SPOIL OF WAR

[Antoninou Liberalis Metamorphoseon Synagoge]. Antonini LiberalisTransformationum Congeries, Interprete Guilielmo Xylandro. Cum Thomae Munckeri notis, Quibus suas adjecit Henricus Verheyk.

Engraved title-page vignette.

8vo. [207 x 130 x 30 mm]. [16]ff, 304, [20] pp. Bound in near contemporary vellum over boards, the covers tooled in gilt with a floral roll border and a flower in the corners, with a large central block incorporating the arms of Amsterdam. Smooth spine divided into five panels by a gilt floral roll and each with a small version of the arms of Amsterdam, plain endleaves, red sprinkled edges, four green silk ties. (One tie partly missing, rubbed and soiled).

Lugduni Batavorum: apud Sam et Joan. Luchtmans, Academiae Typographos, 1774

Internally almost spotless, though the binding is a bit grubby. There is a preliminary printed leaf with the engraved arms of Amsterdam, completed in manuscript, presenting the book as a school prize to "Isaaco Jac. Rochussen" in 1809. Sometime later the volume found its way to South Africa and became a spoil of the Second Boer War.

There are pencil inscriptions inside the front cover: "Taken from Yeomann's Farm near Viljoen's Spruit or Maboosa River Ermelo District Transvaal 30.5.01 by F. W. Radcliffe. Dorset Regt. May XXX, 1901. Transvaal".

Interestingly, an F. W. Radcliffe shows up in the records as serving as a Lieutenant in the 2nd Battalion Dorsetshire Regiment. He was among those captured after the severe British defeat at The Battle of Stormberg on the 10th of December 1899 (South African Field Force Casualty Roll). Radcliffe remained a prisoner of war until the British were able to occupy Pretoria on the 5th of June 1900. The next day Radcliffe was one of 3,187 prisoners listed who were released from the Watervaal Camp and had to walk 13 miles of railway line to rejoin the British forces in Pretoria (Creswicke: South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol.6, pg 11).

In the summer of 1901 the Second Battalion Dorsetshire Regiment was actively engaged in heavy marching and counter-insurgency operations as part of a mobile column under the command of Brigadier General Bullock, operating primarily in the south-east of the Transvaal and the northern parts of the Orange River Colony.

Stock no. ebc9281