Background
Hubbard was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1900, the son of Charles Hubbard and Alice Field.
(Shelf and edge wear to DJ/Boards. Tiny tears to DJ at edg...)
Shelf and edge wear to DJ/Boards. Tiny tears to DJ at edges. Some foxing on end page and pastedown and DJ. Part of sentence blacked-out on back of DJ. Pages are clean and binding is tight. Solid Book.
https://www.amazon.com/Ibamba-Wynant-Davis-Hubbard/dp/B00005W4W8?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B00005W4W8
Hubbard was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1900, the son of Charles Hubbard and Alice Field.
His early education in England and Switzerland reflected the family's fondness for travel. World War I interrupted Hubbard's European studies but enabled him to work on cruises organized by the medical missionary Wilfred T. Grenfell along the Labrador coast in the summers of 1917-1919. This experience sharply whetted his wanderlust and sense of adventure. Meanwhile, Hubbard completed his high school education at Milton Academy in Massachusetts (1918) and then enrolled at Harvard University. Although he did not earn a degree, his studies in geology under Vilhjalmur Stefansson were of considerable importance to his subsequent activities. He also earned some renown as a tackle on Harvard's undefeated football teams of 1919 and 1920. Hubbard spent the summers of his college years traveling and prospecting for gold and silver in Ontario.
In 1921 he left Harvard to become a prospector for asbestos mines in Quebec. In connection with this work he was offered a position as a consulting engineer for a mining consortium in British Central Africa. His acceptance of the job in 1922 marked the beginning of a lifelong love affair with that continent. The engineering job fell through as a result of postwar economic fluctuations, but Hubbard stayed on in Africa as a professional hunter who specialized in obtaining live specimens for zoos. In this capacity he traveled widely in southern Africa and came to know the region so well that he was eventually recognized as one of America's leading authorities on Africa.
The death by drowning of the elder son at Provincetown, South Africa, in 1925 led to the publication of the first of Hubbard's many works on African wildlife. Wild Animals: A White Man's Conquest of Jungle Beasts (1925) was essentially a compilation of stories, most of which had previously appeared in newspapers, scientific journals, or popular publications. In addition to being a memorial to his son, the book was – as Hubbard wrote – a "contribution towards a better understanding by outsiders of a part of Africa's life. "
By the time of his return to the United States in mid-1925, Hubbard clearly had become enamored of Africa and its people. He devoted most of the rest of his life either to travel on the continent or to undertakings based on his African experiences. After the publication of Wild Animals he was asked by National Pictures Company to lead an expedition in Africa that was to produce a film on wild animals. The 1925-1926 undertaking eventually led to the release of two films, Adventures in Africa and Untamed Africa. But because of injuries inflicted by a lion and differences with producers, Hubbard did not receive the profits, which he had hoped to use in creating a research station in Northern Rhodesia.
During the long period of convalescence from his wounds he wrote a second book, Bong 'kwe (1930), and a number of articles. About that time Hubbard inherited a sizable fortune, and he decided to build a research station at Ibamba. He had been divorced from Margaret Carson about 1927.
In 1928 he for the second time. His teen-age wife joined him in his enthusiastic plans. Their aim was to conduct a ten-year experiment in crossbreeding cattle and wild water buffalo in order to produce a strain that could resist the ravages of diseases carried by the tsetse fly. They also envisioned their station as a scientific outpost that others conducting research in Africa could utilize without charge. This ambitious enterprise (1929 - 1935) proved beyond Hubbard's resources, and by 1932 he was publishing letters in the New York Times, pleading for donations to continue his work. Sufficient funds were not forthcoming, and by the mid-1930's he had returned to New York.
In 1935 the Italian campaign in Ethiopia offered Hubbard an opportunity to return to Africa, and he covered the conflict as a war correspondent. He was sharply critical of the Italians, both in his dispatches and in Fiasco in Ethiopia (1936), but despite his antipathy to Mussolini and his followers, he remained convinced that white rule was essential to African development. Indeed, this was the vital element in the advice he offered as an unofficial but respected consultant on Africa to American presidents from Calvin Coolidge to Franklin D. Roosevelt.
After his coverage of the war in Ethiopia, Hubbard was involved in various enterprises over the next decade. These included the presidency of the Africa Company, an exporting firm (1938 - 1939); involvement in the import and export of minerals through the Matavic Corporation and the El Ghedem Mining Corporation; and service to the United States government on overseas agricultural development. During World War II, Hubbard served in G-2 in antisubmarine warfare and intelligence.
His final years were spent in semiretirement in Florida, where he continued to write regularly for adventure magazines. In his last years he completed two books, Wild Animal Hunter (1958) and Ibamba (1962). He died in Miami, Fla.
(Harper & Brothers; 1954 1st stated.)
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He founded the Florida Zoological Society in 1956.
In 1921 he married Margaret Carson. The Hubbards' first son had been born in Canada, and a second son was born shortly after they reached the African interior. A daughter was born to the couple after they returned to the United States following their second African venture in 1925-1926.
In 1928 he married Isabella Menzies; they had one son.
On June 10, 1950, Hubbard married Loyala Bradley Lee.