1946 First Edition of Bantu Folk Tales by Jessie Hertslet — Illustrated Lino-Cuts

Title: Bantu Folk Tales
Author: Jessie Hertslet — Celebrated South African ethnographer and educational author
Illustrator: Joyce Wallis — Renowned mid-century printmaker & lino-cut artist
Genre: Global Folklore / African Oral Histories / Traditional Bantu Mythology
Edition: True First Edition, First Printing (1946)
Publisher: The African Bookman, Cape Town, South Africa
Aesthetics: Illustrated cover boards in a matching pictorial dust jacket; full-page, high-contrast black-and-white original lino-cut print plates.

The Seven Tales

Nurseling of the Waves
Seven Birds and Seven Boys
Onihova's Adventure
The Bird Maidens
The Girl Who Loved Danger
The Woman Who Walked by Moonlight
The Hunger Moon

Published in Cape Town in 1946 during the complex, immediate post-war publishing landscape of South Africa, Bantu Folk Tales stands as a scarce, culturally vital record of regional oral history. The volume anthologizes seven traditional, poetic narratives capturing traditional themes of warrior pride, maternal devotion, and mystical intervention. The title page features the classic idiomatic expression "Abantu ba cisheka amehlo," translating to "Their eyes were put out," reflecting the breathless awe and surprise experienced by those witnessing the tales' ancient magic.

The volume’s artistic allure relies entirely on the stark graphic power of Joyce Wallis’s original lino-cut illustrations. Wallis treats each tale's visual introduction with compositional tension, carving high-contrast block shapes into the linoleum to produce dense, heavily textured prints of animal familiars, protective birds, and traditional figures that jump off the mid-century paper stock. Released by the short-lived, independent publishing house The African Bookman.

Jessie Hertslet was a distinguished South African author and social activist who dedicated her life to capturing and preserving the indigenous narratives of the region, famously publishing My Roots Went Deep in Africa and Nompila, or, Sixty Years in Africa. Respected for her progressive educational work within Zulu communities, her comprehensive health lectures, correspondence files, and research questionnaires for school children remain permanently preserved for academic study within the prestigious Killie Campbell Collections at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

Joyce Wallis was an accomplished mid-century South African artist and printmaker celebrated for her mastery over relief printing and the graphic arts. Her lino-cut designs for Bantu Folk Tales are celebrated by art historians for their ability to blend traditional Western book design constraints with the raw, rhythmic energy of traditional African wood carving styles, transforming each illustration into a standalone fine art print specimen.

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Condition: Near Fine/Very Good. Dust jacket: On the front, small closed tear and chipping at upper edge; on the back, moderate soiling, small open tear at lower left; bumping at corners. Illustrated cover boards with brown cloth spine: Bumped at corners; scuff at tail of the spine. Pages are clean, undamaged, and complete.