1897 NANSEN'S FARTHEST NORTH NORWEGIAN POLAR EXPEDITION

ABOUT ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY
FULL PAGE AND
NUMEROUS TEXT ILLUSTRATIONS
SIXTEEN COLOURED PLATES
IN FACSIMILE FROM
 DR NANSEN'S OWN SKETCHES
ETCHED PORTRAIT
PHOTOGRAVURES
AND MAPS

In 1893 Fridtjof Nansen1861-1930, explorer, author, artist, athlete, oceanographer, and statesman set sail for the North Pole in the Fram, a ship specially designed to be frozen into the polar ice cap, withstand its crushing pressures, and travel north with the sea's drift. Experts said that such a ship couldn't be built and that the mission was tantamount to suicide.
 This is his account of the Fram and her historic voyage, of his expedition's struggle against snowdrifts, ice floes, polar bears, scurvy, hunger, and the endless polar nights. Once it became clear that the Fram could drift no farther, Nansen and crew member Hjalmar Johansen set out on a  fifteen month sledge journey to reach their destination by foot, sharing a sleeping bag and feeding the weaker sled dogs to the stronger ones. In the end, they travelled 146 miles farther north than any Westerner had gone before, representing the greatest single gain in polar exploration in four centuries.

Two quite large and heavy volumes with a total of almost 1,200 pages with 92 in text illustrations, plus16 colour plates,113 full page illustrations mostly from photographs, and 4 fold out maps in colour.

Condition
Original publishers cloth bindings with gilt lettering to spines and front boards with gilt illustrations, bindings have some slight wear with some bumps to edges, slight foxing to some page edges, dampstain to bottom edge of frontispiece plate of volume 2, all complete.
Size of each volume 9¾ by 6¾ inches.

FRONT BOARDS

REAR BOARDS

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