For the information about Cecil Rhodes’ ill-fated British songbird project, I have many of Rhodes’ biographers to thank; in addition, Appollon Davidson offered an unexpected sub-plot by linking the Jameson Raid with Oscar Wilde’s trials of 1895 in his extraordinary Cecil Rhodes and his Time (Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1988). I have also drawn on details from: Robert I. Rothberg’s monumental volume The Founder: Cecil Rhodes and the Pursuit of Power (Southern Book Publishers, Johannesburg, 1988); Elizabeth Pakenham’s insights in her Jameson’s Raid (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1960); Brian Roberts’ description of life in the New Rush diamond-mining camps in Kimberley, Turbulent City (David Philip, Cape Town, 1976); and the research of the many biographers of most of the characters in Manly Pursuits. Their revelations have provided me with the historical framework of this novel, which is narrated by practically the only character in the book who exists only in my imagination.
I should also like to thank those friends and family members whose enthusiastic support has encouraged me so much, and whose printing equipment was responsible for the original hard copy of Manly Pursuits.