The Jameson Raid by Hugh Marshall Hole. Ex libris Sarah Gertrude Millin (1930).
This copy of Hugh Marshall Hole’s The Jameson Raid (1930), is a remarkable piece of South African literary and artistic history. It bridges a watershed political event, the private secretary who witnessed its fallout, a major 20th-century South African author, and a celebrated pioneer of modern South African art.
The Bookplate: A Rare "Lippy" Lipshitz Artwork
The Ex Libris plate pasted inside the cover belongs to Sarah Gertrude Millin (1889–1968), one of South African literature’s most prominent, prolific, and controversial figures of the early-to-mid 20th century (celebrated for her novels like God's Stepchildren and her definitive biographies of Cecil Rhodes and Jan Smuts).
The bookplate itself is a bold, modernist linocut/woodcut designed exclusively for Millins by the famous South African sculptor and artist Israel "Lippy" Lipshitz. The left margin of the artwork indicates his signature "LIPPY" carved vertically into the block. Lipshitz was a pioneer of modernism in South Africa, and his original graphic prints and custom bookplates are rare and highly collectible ephemera. The dramatic expressionist style perfectly captures the energy of the 1930s Cape Town art scene.
The Provenance Connection: Millin and Cecil Rhodes
There is a profound historical irony to Sarah Gertrude Millin owning this book. In 1933—just three years after Marshall Hole published this volume—Millin published her acclaimed, definitive biography, Rhodes.
The Jameson Raid of 1895 (the subject of this book) was the catastrophic, unauthorized incursion into the South African Republic led by Dr. Leander Starr Jameson (pictured on the frontispiece). The raid was heavily backed by Cecil Rhodes and ultimately forced Rhodes to resign in disgrace as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony. Millin undoubtedly used contemporary accounts and histories exactly like this one by Marshall Hole while researching and writing her masterpiece on Rhodes. This very copy may well have been a working reference text on her desk.
The Author's Insider Perspective
The text itself, has its own deep history. The author, Hugh Marshall Hole, wasn't just a detached historian; he was an ultimate insider. He served as the private secretary to Dr. Jameson himself from 1891 to 1893 during Jameson's tenure as Administrator of Mashonaland. Because Hole knew "Dr. Jim" intimately—including his reckless love for a gamble—his 1930 account offers an invaluable, psychologically nuanced look at how the conspirators blundered into a raid that fundamentally accelerated the march toward the Anglo-Boer War.
160mm x 235mm x 40mm
Ex library copy with stamps; markings on the spine ; some scattered page stains etc.
R1,500
