Feb 04, 2016 - Sale 2404

Sale 2404 - Lot 53

Price Realized: $ 688
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
(ARCTIC.) Franklin, John. Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea. 4 folding maps, 30 plates (11 of them hand-colored). [iii]-xvi, 768, 6 pages. 4to, modern morocco with original backstrip laid down; lacking half-title, offsetting of some plates; Edinger bookplate. London, 1823

Additional Details

first edition of this first-hand account of Franklin's Canadian Arctic expedition from 1819 to 1822, including supplementary reports by other survivors. Franklin's party was reduced to eating the leather in their shoes and lost 11 of 20 men, mostly to starvation, but they also charted vast expanses which had been previously unknown to Europeans. "One of the most terrible journeys on record . . . among the classics of travel literature"--Lande 1181. Books on Ice 3.1; Hill 635; TPL 1248.