Physical description

Book, brown covers, embossed with borders and patterns and gilt decoration and titles. The book includes illustrations. Handwritten inscription on the front paste-down page. The opposite page has a stamped and a handwritten inscription.
The book was presented as a prize to a Latin student at the National School, Warrnambool in 1861.
Title: Odd People being a Popular Description of Singular Races of Man.
Alternate title: Odd People or Singular Races of Man
Author: Captain Mayne Reid
Publisher: Routledge Warne & Routledge, London
Date: 1860
Further information: additional text on the spine reads 'A Proper Study of Mankind is Man'

Publication type

fiction

Inscriptions & markings

Handwritten inscription, seven lines of text: "Second Prize Latin Class gained by Daniel B Sellers. National School Warrnambool. Dec. 1861"
Black ink stamp "000320"
Handwritten in pencil "V.53"

Summary

Odd People: Being a Popular Description of Singular Races of Man (1860) is an interesting piece of 19th-century literature. The book was written by Captain Thomas Mayne Reid (1818–1883), a Scots-Irish American novelist and adventurer. He was immensely popular in the mid-to-late 19th century for his boys' adventure novels, tales of the American West, and travelogues. The true first edition was published in London by Routledge, Warne & Routledge in 1860. In the United States, it was published around the same time (1860/1861) by Ticknor and Fields in Boston, and later editions were retitled The Man-Eaters and Other Odd People. The book is an early work of popular ethnology and anthropology, written for a general audience and heavily marketed toward young readers and armchair travelers of the Victorian era.