Author: RODERICK HAIG-BROWN.
Title: Panther.
Description: First Edition. London. Jonathan Cape. 1934. First Edition. Octavo (7 x 5 1/2). [4], 7-10 [11-12], 13-257 [258] pp. Panther is Roderick Haig-Brown’s intimate story of Vancouver Island panthers (or cougars or mountain lions, if you like), Blackstreak and Nassa and their cub, Ki-yu. These are panthers roaming at the northern tip of Vancouver Island, who sometimes weigh as much as 250 pounds - powerful and fearless and who hunt deer and elk and only occasionally attack cattle and raid chicken coops. It is Ki-yu who grows to be the largest and most powerful and fearless of panthers as he ranges over the Plateau and the Wapiti Valley. And it is the story of the ranchers who fear him and seek to kill him. Haig-Brown studied panthers under the watchful eye of John Cecil Smith, the greatest of Vancouver Island panther hunters. Roderick Haig-Brown’s story is based on first-hand experience, his own and Mr. Smith’s. /// Panther was published in London in November 1934, a week before the book was published in the U.S. by Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, under the title Ki-yu: A Story of Panthers. The text is identical under both titles. The 1934 Jonathan Cape first edition of Panther is by far Haig-Brown’s scarcest book and it’s a rare book in the trade. This is just the second time in more than 25 years that I’ve had it. Haig-Brown’s literary agent in New York, Harold Ober Associates, had no record of the number of copies of Cape's Panther sold, but it was undoubtedly very small. You will see dozens of Ki-yu’s before you’ll see another first of Panther. The book is bound in the publisher’s first state binding of green cloth with yellow titles on the spine and front cover (there’s also a second state binding in red cloth). There’s scattered foxing in the text and the spine title is dulled. A very good book.

Keywords: