HELL ON ICE. The Saga of the "Jeannette" by Ellsberg, Commander Edward - 1938

New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1938. Pages: [xi], 421. 1 map in the text, 1 tailpiece illustration. Full, tree-calf leather, framed in gilt with gilt-stamped crest of Upper Canada College to front cover, ornate gilt-stamping to the panelled spine, black leather spine labels. Bright gilt to all edges, marbled endpapers. A prize book with presentation sheet mounted to front pastedown endpaper, and dated "October 21st, 1938", otherwise there are no signatures, marks, etc. Light rubbing to the joints, else a fine copy. Very handsome on the shelf! A dramatic fictionalized account of the fateful 1879 Jeannette expedition to the North Pole, as told through the eyes of chief engineer George Wallace Melville. First published in 1938, the vivid tale was adapted as a radio broadcast by Orson Welles for the Mercury Theater (who famously went on to produce 'War of the Worlds'). Commander Ellsberg discovered in the half-surpressed logs of the hapless expedition a story of incredible excitement and variety -- a tale of men locked two years in the Arctic pack, of sudden disaster, of desperate flight across the cruel ice, of a wild small boat passage over the storm swept Arctic seas to the barren frozen tundra of Siberia. But more than that, he saw in those events human heroism and courage in the face of such hardships as have never been recorded before nor since. He saw men who had been ordinary sailors and officers transformed by extraordinary occurences -- some into gallant leaders, a few into shirkers and mutineers, others into lunatics, some into reckless martyrs, one at least into a hero whom all men can be proud.. FIRST EDITION. Full-Leather. Very Good. Octavo.