LEAKEY, L. S. B. The Southern Kikuyu before 1903. London: Academic Press, 1977 In three volumes. 8vo. (1). xxiv,509pp. lxxiiipp. frontispiece and 10 plates, 14 figures, endpaper maps, index. (2). xxviii,511-991pp. lxxiiipp. frontispiece and 5 plates, endpaper maps, index. (3). xxiv,993-1369pp. lxxiiipp. frontispiece and plate, endpaper maps, botanical appendix, biblio., index.

Louis Seymour Bazett Leakey (1903 – 1972) was an Anglo-Kenyan archaeologist and anthropologist who first proposed the idea that hominids originated in Africa. As a boy he was initiated into the Kikuyu tribe. ‘This impressive book is a complete record of the ways of the Kikuyu people, before and during the period of European influence which accompanied road and railway building and political and economic changes in the late nineteenth century. It is the major anthropological achievement of the late L. S. B. Leakey, and the culmination of his life-long study of the people among whom he was born and raised.’ The Winterton copy with his bookplate, a very nice set in the publisher’s brown cloth, all volumes with the dust-wrappers.