The Second Grinnell Expedition In Search Of John Franklin, 1853, '54, '55.
Arctic Explorations The Second Grinnell Expedition In Search Of John Franklin, 1853, '54, '55.
Childs & Peterson, New York, And Trubner & Co, London, 1856.
First edition, British issue. 8vo. Two volumes. Bound in the publisher's navy blue cloth, lettered and decorated gilt to spines, with blindstamped decoration to the covers. Enrgaved frontispieces and title pages to each volume. Two folding maps and two full page maps. Eighteen striking steel-engraved plates under tissue guards, and over three hundred wood engraved vignettes, all after illustrations by the author. A very good set in the original cloth and without repair, though with some mottling and a little staining to the boards.
Kane's hugely popular account of his second Franklin Search expedition.
Although the book would sell 135,000 copies in the first three years, and despite Kane's returning with a hero's welcome, the expedition was beset with difficulty.
The crew was inexperienced, as was Kane, and in the expedition's first August their ship the Advance came stuck in the ice where it would stay for the next twenty-one months. Remarkably, despite the expedition's difficulties Kane lost only three of his twenty-strong crew, while achieving a new farthest north, discovering the Kennedy Channel, Kane Basin and sighting the Humboldt Glacier.
"The book became enormously popular, being marketed at trade shows and sold door to door, often compared with the Bible for wide dissemination on America's bedside reading tables" (Books On Ice).
PROVENANCE: From the library of distinguished polar historian Ann Savours Shirley, with her ownership inscription to the front endpaper of volume 1. Occasional annotations by Shirley are noted on separate slips on paper, and loosely laid to the relevant page.
Books On Ice (3.9).
Stock ID: 40643
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