The Worst Journey in The World. by CHERRY-GARRARD, Apsley - 1922

London: Constable and Company Limited, , 1922. Antarctic 1910-1913. 2 volumes, octavo. Original mid-blue cloth, title gilt to spines and front covers. Coloured frontispiece with tissue-guard to each and 4 other coloured plates in all, 43 black and white plates, 10 folding panoramas, 5 maps, 4 of them folding. Bookplate of John Bernard Dancer (1913-1981) MRCS, LRCP, ophthalmological surgeon, and neat pencilled inscription to pastedown of vol. I, "J. Bernard Dancer, Shaftesbury 1946". Spines lightly sunned, spine of vol. I lightly rubbed, minor abrasions to rear covers, endpapers toned, vol. I cracked at gutter of p. 224 but sound, two maps in vol. II untrimmed and standing proud of the book block. A very good set. First edition, first impression. A total of 1,500 copies of the first impression were printed. The first choice "polar" binding of cloth-backed boards proved fragile and some copies were issued in this "library" blue cloth. Renard regards the blue cloth as "in many respects the most desirable"; Rosove notes that it is "significantly scarcer than the previous" binding. Cherry-Garrard's account of the Terra Nova expedition of 1910-13 "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 He was a member of the main party for the expedition's entire duration, had access to unpublished sources, and was the only member of the Winter Journey to survive the expedition.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" (Rosove). "Cherry-Garrard seems an unlikely hero of Antarctic exploration, but he has achieved that status largely through this book … a young but wealthy patrician, near-sighted and frail, he paid his way onto the crew as an assistant zoologist, but performed splendidly in many harrowing situations … The 'worst journey' of the title was not Scott's ill-fated rendezvous with death, but the earlier Ross Island winter trip from Cape Evans to the penguin colony at Cape Crozier … Both of Cherry's companions on the Winter Journey (as it was called) died on the Southern journey with Scott. Cherry participated on that trip but was with the last group to be sent back to the base before the final assault on the South Pole; he also was sent to rendezvous with the returning party of Scott and his four companions, a failed mission; and finally he was the one who discovered their tent and the three bodies in it" (Books on Ice).