The official account of an heroic endeavour
SCOTT, Captain Robert Falcon. Scott's Last Expedition … Arranged by Leonard Huxley with a Preface by Sir Clements Markham. London: Spottiswoode & Co. Ltd. for Smith, Elder & Co. 1913.
Two volumes, 8vo. Original blue cloth, boards with blind-ruled borders, titled in gilt on the upper boards and lettered in gilt on the spines, top edges gilt, others uncut; pp. xxvi, 633, [2, advertisement]; xvi, [2], 534, titles printed in red and black, photogravure portrait frontispieces of Scott and Edward A. Wilson by Emery Walker after Harrington Mann and E.J. Wilson, 6 photogravure plates by Swan after Edward A. Wilson with printed tissue guards, 18 colour-printed plates after Wilson (17) and Ponting (1) with tissue guards, 178 plates, 2 folding and 3 double-page, after Ponting et al., 3 leaves of facsimiles, 8 folding maps bound to throw-clear, one colour-printed, explanatory slip tipped in before map at the end of vol. I, illustrations in the text; head of spine of volume two with minimal wear, a little offsetting from rear endpapers to final pages and maps; otherwise very attractive set, contemporary collector's stamps B.L. Fletcher to front fly-leaves.
Second printing, called edition by the publishers, very similar to the first. Scott's Last Expedition, the official account of the expedition, comprises Scott's journal (volume I) and accounts by Cherry-Garrard, Campbell, Tayler, Evans, and Atkinson (volume II): Scott's writing "contains far more personal commentary about himself and his men than was contained in The Voyage of the Discovery, and he achieved those great literary moments characterizing that former work, even early in the course of the expedition when he had so many preoccupations that most leaders might have transferred to their journals only the simplest notations" (Rosove p. 357).
Rosove 290.A2 ('uncommon'); Spence 1063.
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