author
Frederick Courteney Selous
1851–1917
Drawn by wild places from an early age, he became one of the best-known explorers and big-game hunters of southern Africa, and later an influential voice for wildlife conservation. His adventures were so vivid that they helped inspire H. Rider Haggard’s Allan Quatermain.
2 Audiobooks
Sunshine and Storm in Rhodesia Being a Narrative of Events in Matabeleland Both Before and During the Recent Native Insurrection Up to the Date of the Disbandment of the Bulawayo Field Force
by Frederick Courteney Selous
African Nature Notes and Reminiscences
by Frederick Courteney Selous
About the author
Born in London on December 31, 1851, Frederick Courteney Selous developed an early passion for natural history and outdoor life. As a young man he traveled to southern Africa, where his journeys and hunting expeditions made him famous in Britain. Accounts of his travels also added to European knowledge of regions that later became closely associated with Zimbabwe.
Selous was more than a hunter-adventurer. He wrote popular books about his travels and observations of wildlife, and over time he became increasingly associated with conservation as well as field natural history. His reputation for toughness, bushcraft, and close observation made him a legendary figure in his own lifetime.
During the First World War, although already in his sixties, he served in East Africa as an officer and was killed in action on January 4, 1917, near Kisaki in what was then German East Africa, now Tanzania. He remained a widely admired figure after his death, remembered both for his African expeditions and for the larger-than-life example they gave to later adventure writers.