All for three Penguin Eggs
CHERRY-GARRARD, Apsley George Benet. The Worst Journey in the World: Antarctic 1910-1913. London: R. & R. Clark, Limited for Constable and Company Limited. 1922.
Two volumes, 8vo. Linen-backed, light-blue original paper covered boards, spare set of original printed paper title-labels on spines [duplicate title-labels tipped removed from front free endpapers, pasted onto modern pastiche linen spines], light-blue endpapers, uncut; pp. lxiv, 300, [4 (appendix)]; viii, 301-585, [3, blank]; colour-printed frontispieces after E.A. Wilson, retaining tissue-guards, 4 colour-printed plates and 20 half-tone plates after E.A. Wilson, 22 half-tone photographic plates after C.S. Wright and Frank Debenham, 10 folding collotype panoramas by Emery Walker Limited after Wilson and Debenham, 4 folding collotype maps and plans by Emery Walker Limited after Cherry-Garrard and Cherry-Garrard after Wilson, and one plan after Wilson; extremities lightly rubbed and offsetting from endpapers (both as ususal), apart from light spotting here and there a good and clean copy.
First edition, an expertly re-spined copy.
Following his father's death in 1907, Cherry-Garrard (1886-1959) inherited a large fortune, and in 1909 embarked upon a voyage around the world on cargo boats; 'Hearing when at Brisbane that Captain Robert Falcon Scott proposed a second expedition to the Antarctic in 1910, he wrote to Edward Wilson, whom he had met previously at a shooting party in Scotland, volunteering his services. Every member of the expedition was a specialist of some sort and he was accepted by Scott on Wilson's recommendation alone: he duly enlisted as "assistant zoologist". Yet from the outset, despite his youth and inexperience, he won the affectionate regard of his more seasoned comrades, and before the close of the expedition had more major sledge journeys to his credit than any other surviving member' (ODNB). Wilson took Cherry-Garrard and Bowers with him on the 1911 Winter Journey and the shared experience of this formidable and dangerous journey of 120 miles in darkness, at temperatures in excess of -70°F created a very strong bond between the three men. Cherry-Garrard later undertook a support expedition to One Ton Depot in March 1912 which was intended to meet the returning Polar Party, but he was forced to return when his supplies ran out and he was then a member of the search team which found the bodies of Scott, Wilson and Bowers in early November 1912.
His polar experiences determined the remainder of Cherry-Garrard's life; on his return from the Antarctic, he served in Flanders, but was invalided out of the army in 1916, and he then spent much of his protracted convalescence writing The Worst Journey in the World -- a title inspired by Scott's description of the 1911 Winter Journey as 'the hardest that has ever been made' (quoted in ODNB). Although Cherry-Garrard had been approached by H.G. Lyons of the Captain Scott Antarctic Fund to write an official history of the expedition, the two men subsequently argued and 1919 Cherry-Garrard determined to published his book independently.
From its first appearance in this edition in 1922, The Worst Journey in the World was recognised as one of the great works of travel and exploration, and it has remained continually in print: 'Cherry-Garrard's book has often been referred to as the finest polar book ever written. Scott's diary left many facets of the expedition and the experiences of its men untold: it was Cherry-Garrard who pulled the entire story of the main party together. He was uniquely suited to do so. He was a member of the main party for the expedition's entire duration, had access to unpublished sources, and was the only member of the Winter Journey to survive the expedition. Most of all, he had the sensibilities and extraordinary literary genius necessary to cope with the complex and tragic subject of the Polar Journey. He managed a credible and creditable balance of viewpoints on many issues that engendered controversy among contemporaries. […] Material for the book derived from Cherry-Garrard's notes, diary, and recollections, the diaries of Wilson, Bowers, Lashly, Priestley, and Atkinson, Bowers' letters to his mother, conversations with expedition members, and the previously published books on the expedition. […] The book Cherry-Garrrard left behind is a monument immortalizing the expedition in the annals of Antarctic exploration and geographic exploration in general. His account of the Winter Journey in chapter 7 […] is worth more than one reading: it is testimony to how far undaunted individuals will go for the sake of knowledge, and it is affirmation of the importance of people under duress remaining faithful to each other. […] Cherry achieves for the reader a virtual firsthand experience of the Winter Journey's incomprehensible hardships and the men's suffering. In addition to the Winter Journey, the book contains a detailed account of the main party, the Polar Journey, and the Search Journey' (Rosove).
Conrad p. 173; Spence 277; Rosove 71.A1 ('Uncommon'); Taurus 84 ('the best written and most enduring account of exploits in the Antarctic').
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