Leaves from a Missionary's Notebook

Stephen Tennant.

Secker and Warburg. 1929 [1937]. First edition. Blue cloth-bound hardback, dust jacket. Unpaginated [80 pages]. Tennant's drawings and handwriting are illustrated in facsimile. 270 x 175mm (10¾ x 7"). 0.5kg. . English. Very good; jacket has light shelf wear, some light rufflling to top edge, some wear at forecorners, 3cm tear to front top forecorner, small 2cm tear with slight loss at base of spine, 4cm area of loss at head of spine, general browning especially to spine; light shelf wear to boards, faint spotting to endpapers, no inscriptions.

Leaves from a Missionary's Notebook, subtitled 'The Story of Felix Littlejohn. Missionary and Explorer', was Stephen Tennant's only commercially published book. It reveals, through pictures and Tennant's swirling text, the adventures of a missionary sent to the South Seas. The residents are not however susceptible to conversion and Littlejohn is surrounded by lusty locals and beefy sailors, common motifs in Tennant's works.

Although the book was completed in 1929, it was not published until 1937. It was republished in 1986 to celebrate the author's eightieth birthday when it was banned by Lambeth libraries for it's racial stereotypes.

[Hoare, Philip. Serious Pleasures. p.133-4]