Working Men's Educational Union.- David Livingstone

A set of 14 lithographs on cotton, illustrating David Livingstone's first African journey, including a two-sheet route map, with the union’s numbered stamps, brass eyelets for hanging, varying degrees of staining, 6 with large stain, each c. 90 x 120cm, c.1858 (14)

*** These scenes are taken directly from the wood-engravings made for Livingstone's Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa, 1857.

The Working Men’s Educational Union was a philanthropic society established in 1832 with the objective of “the elevation of the working classes, as regards their physical, intellectual, moral and religious condition”. Their chief means of achieving this was to encourage popular literary and scientific lectures “by preparing suitable diagrams and other aids to lectures.”