Portrait of a Wilderness: The story of the Coto Donana Expeditions by MOUNTFORT, Guy - 1958

London: Hutchinson & Co, 1958. Hardcover. Illustrations by Eric Hosking. Introduction by Field Marshal the Viscount Alanbrooke. Small 4to. Grey cloth with gilt lettering and decoration, pictorial dust jacket. 240pp. Color frontispiece, numerous illustrations (some color), map endpapers. Very good/good plus. Faint binding edgeweary; couple spots to outer page edges; jacket edgeworn, with a few edge chips and archivally closed (on verso) edge tears, but complete and still attractive. A tight and nice first edition of this (to cite front jacket panel) "story of the ornithological expeditions" to this unspoiled region of southern Spain in 1952, 1956 and 1957. This special copy belonged to Illinois governor and two-time presidential candidate Adlai E. Stevenson II (1900-65), who visited the area while U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. The book bears a printed dedication to the family who since 1835 owned the influential Gonzalez Byass, one of Spain's best-known sherry bodegas, and they are also thanked by Mountfort in his preface. The frontispiece verso bears a choice inscription in blue ink from one of the family directors of that firm: "H.E. Mr Adlay Stevenson -- / A small souvenir of your visit / to the Palacio de Donana on the / 13th April 1963 and to our Bodega / Gonzalez Byass in Jerez de la Frontera, / from one of the many friends you left / in Spain. / Sincerely yours / Manolo Gonzalez. / Jerez, April 1963."