Life of Frederick Courtenay Selous, D.s.o., Capt. 25th Royal Fusiliers

Frederick Courtenay Selous lived a life that read like fiction, yet ended in tragic reality. Born in 1851 to a family of means, he channeled his restless childhood energy into an obsession with Africa and its creatures, making his first expedition at nineteen and returning again and again to map territories, collect specimens, and hunt the most dangerous game on the continent. This biography, written by his friend John Guille Millais, draws on family letters and personal recollections to paint an intimate portrait of a man who embodied the imperial adventure narrative at its most romantic and its most consequential. Selous contributed significantly to natural history, helped establish wildlife conservation principles, and ultimately traded his rifle for a uniform when Europe went to war. He fell in 1917 at the Battle of Gaza, a veteran explorer killed in the mechanized slaughter of modern warfare, his death marking the end of an era. The book captures both the exhilaration of nineteenth-century exploration and the melancholy of a world being swept away.