Adam in Plumes by Colin Simpson

Adam in Plumes

by Colin Simpson

Angus and Robertson, 1954, [First Edition], colour and black and white photographic plates, black and white line drawings, illustrated endpapers, hardcover, dustjacket

Very Good Condition, some edge and shelf wear, some rubbing and bumping to edges and corners, dustjacket shows some edge and shelf wear with some rubbing, bumping, creasing, chipping and tears, re-enforced in parts with tape, small parts missing at top and bottom of spine (see photographs)

“A glance at this third Adam book indicates that Colin Simpson has found his richest material yet in the heart of New Guinea.  The colour plates show that the people about whom he writes, who adorn themselves with plumes of the birds of paradise and shining pearl shell, must surely be “the most picturesque primitives left on the face of the earth”.
One of the most fascinating exploration dramas of modern times was the discovery some twenty years ago of the high valleys of central New Guinea and their inhabitants.  The natives of the mountain-walled Wahgi Valley were literally “out of this world”.  They were warriors and gardeners who built lawn-like dancing parks and who, for all their Stone Age axes, had a medieval sense of pageantry and economics.  They thought that the white men who discovered them were spirit-men who had walked out of the sky.
Then, in this book Colin Simpson shows us these people twenty years later.  Astonishing aspects of their lives – violent, religious, erotic – are revealed in vivid first-hand impressions and in the findings of pioneer missionaries and anthropologists now in the field.”