Two volumes. First editions. 8vo. Dark blue grained cloth with gilt titles and the silver vignette 'Leaning On The Wind' to upper cover. Top edge blue. Inscribed by Mawson to the first blank, "Professor W. A. Haswell, with the author's kind regards and appreciation of great service rendered to the expedition - Douglas Mawson May 1915." Extensively illustrated with 218 plates across both volumes including sepia photographic frontispieces, colour drawings, and autochrome colour and black and white photographs. Thirty-seven maps, charts and sketches throughout the text. Three folding maps in the rear pocket of the second volume. A very good set indeed, the upper covers clean and bright, with some dulling to the gilt lettering on the spines. Save for a little tenderness to the lower hinge of volume two, a well preserved set, and far better than usually encountered.

A superb association copy of one of the most important literary and scientific contributions from the heroic age. Inscribed to notable biologist and colleague of Mawson's, W. A. Haswell. Haswell consulted with Mawson in advance of the expedition, and after its return edited the biological sections of the published scientific findings, which comprised a large portion of the whole. In tribute to Haswell, Mawson named Haswell Island off Mabus Point after him, home to a rookery of emperor penguins.
Mawson held scientific discovery above the achievement of the South Pole and so when he was invited as geologist to Scott's Terra Nova expedition he declined, choosing instead to lead the Australasian Antarctic Expedition to hitherto unexplored regions of the Australian Antarctic Territory.
Over three years and through extreme weather "the land parties explored nearly 2000 miles of coastline, while sledge parties traversed some 4000 miles in the coastlands and hinterlands, gaining scientific information of great value" (ODNB).
The work ranks highly in the polar canon on both literary and scientific grounds. David and Deidre Stam reckon "Mawson's account of his coastal sledging journey, in which two of his companions died, is without peer among first person accounts of polar adventure", while Rosove notes that "the work emanating from the expedition ranks it as one of the great scientific expeditions of the heroic era".

Rosove 217. Books On Ice 6.9.

Stock ID: 39288