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Brandt, Johanna : The Petticoat Commando or Boer Women in Secret Service

Mills & Boon, Limited, London, 1913

374 pages (complete). Inscribed by Brandt on the frontispage (dated: July 5th 1946). The frontispiece portrait was signed by Johanna Brandt as 'Johanna Brandt-van Wermelo' (the latter being her family name). The linen covers are much worn and marked and scuffed from age and handling and ownership. The spine has creasing from usage The pages are mild, clean, clear, very confident. A pleasing, happy copy despite its age and wear. fk. Book Condition: Good. Binding: Softcover. Jacket: No Jacket

First Edition.
Signed

Brandt, Johanna : The Petticoat Commando, or Boer Women in Secret Service

(London: Mills & Boon, 1913, 1st edition)

Crown 8vo; original khaki cloth blocked in black and green, with impression of 'The Six Willows, Harmony' to upper cover; pp. xv + (i) + 374 + (ii) + 32; frontis. portrait with tissue-guard; plates. (Hackett, p. 46, 131; SABIB I, p. 274) Cloth very fishmothed and rather worn; archival tape repairs to backstrip at head and tail, length of lower joint, and head of upper joint; hinges also reinforced with archival tape; old tape mark and patch of deletion fluid over earlier penned name on front endpaper; some foxing to edges and endpapers, with sporadic, minor foxing elsewhere; discreet pencilled marginalia and occasional annotations. A modest copy of this work, which is fairly uncommon in first edition format. "An account of work done by Boer women patriots during the struggle for independence. The narrative is based on a war diary relating events in the district of Pretoria, then under martial law." - Hackett: South African War Books, p. 46. "During the British occupation of Pretoria she and her mother secretly carried on a liaison service for the Transvaal burghers from their house 'Harmonie' on the Apies River. It was the hiding place of Boer spies such as Captain J.J. Naude, and was also used to smuggle out information. Johanna Brandt employed a secret code which appeared when pressed with a hot iron, and in which she also kept a war diary. This has been preserved and is now part of the Brandt collection in the archives of the NH Kerk in Pretoria. With her mother she was one of the six volunteer nurses from Pretoria who assisted in the concentration camp at Irene. The desperate conditions in this camp were made known to the outside world by Mrs Van Warmelo and Johanna Brandt by means of a sympathetic person's silver cigarette case. A full description was smuggled out in this manner to the well-disposed journalist W. T. Stead and widely circulated through his journal Review of Reviews." - DSAB IV, p. 55.

BRANDT, Johanna : The Petticoat Commando, or Boer Women in Secret Service

Mills & Boon, 1913

A fine unusually bright copy in the original dark orange pictorial cloth., hint of scarring to extreme fore-edge of front board

Second Edition

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