POLAR - BULL, Jacob B[reda] (author). Fridtjof Nansen. A Book for the Young. By Jacob B. Bull. Translated from the Norwegian by The Rev. Mordaunt R. Barnard, Vicar of Margaretting, one of the translators of "Farthest North". London, Isbister and Company, Limited 1898.
8vo.; publisher's bluish-grey pictorial cloth over bevelled boards, blocked in white, burgundy, and elaborate gilt within a single-rule panel in white to upper board, spine ruled and lettered gilt, embossed in gilt, patterned endpapers; pp. [ii], 132, [8, publisher's advertisements], with frontispiece map of the Arctic and monochrome illustrations in the text (after wood-engravings and photographs), an unusually attractive copy with light overall dust-soiling, minor shelf-rubbing to edges and forecorners, spine ends a little bruised, and a small whitish spot (5mm) to lower board; internally very good and clean throughout with some offsetting to recto of the frontispiece and an early, neat, inscription there.
First edition in English of this attractive and well-researched book for young adult readers, documenting the childhood, upbringing and achievements of this Norwegian explorer, scientist, polymath, humanitarian and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Published in the U.S. the following year. Nansen and his team made the first crossing of the Greenland peninsula, in 1888. During the Fram Expedition (1893-1896) he reached the most northerly latitude attained at that time. COPAC records copies at B.L.; Cambridge; Trinity, Dublin; Nat. Library of Scotland; Oxford.
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