New Guinea Headhunt

New York: The Macmillan Company, 1947. Hardcover. Second impression, viii, 441p., illustrated with sketched vignettes and fullpage paintings reproduced in b&w, hardbound in 8.5x5.5 inch black cloth boards lettered pale yellow; lacks any jacket. Front endsheets are a doublespread line map, rear endsheets are blank except for an owner's bookplate (an interesting image belonging to one Maurice Chayet). Foxed copy with plenty of foxing and dust-soil to top edge of textblock, more to the other edges and to front blanks and titlepage, mild wear and offset soil to casing, not a bad copy: sturdy, square, and otherwise clean and unmarked, let's say "good only" ..though the action is hunting heads,"there is little blood beyond these first few pages. Our own manhunt in New Guinea was for native models whose heads we wanted to paint in portraits, and it took place in the golden days between wars.. Our picture of new Guinea is therefore just an artist's impressions.." A further FYI, the "Maurice Chayet" of the bookplate may be the "French politician and diplomat who was most notably First Secretary to the French Embassy in Beijing..