SALLY IN RHODESIA - Sheila MacDonald

Published by Books of Rhodesia, 1970 - Rhodesiana Reprint Library

Hardcover with dustjacket. Jacket has some edgewear and rubbing otherwise a great copy of this book.

THIS book originated as a series of letters written by a young bride in Rhodesia to her mother in Britain, between 1901 and 1912. It tells, in charming conversational style, of the rigours of domestic life in early Salisbury (now Harare), the raising of a young family, the social life of the day and the activities of her husband "Toby". Sheila Macdonald's delightful humour ripples through the book and is at its best, perhaps, when she recounts how she copes with the culinary exploits of inexperienced domestic servants. Sally in Rhodesia ran to many editions in the United Kingdom and Australia, and became something of an institution in Rhodesia, a classic on the family life of "the settler". "Sally" (nee Sheila MacKenzie) was born in New Zealand, where her father ran a sheep station and was, for a time, a Member of the New Zealand Parliament. After the death of her first husband in 1924 she left Rhodesia for England, where she supported her family by writing books. In 1933 she remarried and lived with her husband in Tanganyika and Kenya before eventually retiring to Cape Town in South Africa.

These letters, hurriedly written as they often are, in bits and pieces in the intervals of work and travel, throw a vivid light on the chances and excitements and humours of daily life in that mission-field and on the minds of the native Africans, besides giving glimpses of the larger events that were happening further afield. 

Please see pics as they form part of the description.