The Worst Journey in The World. by CHERRY-GARRARD, Apsley - 1930: Antarctic 1910-1913.

New York: Lincoln MacVeagh, The Dial Press,, 1930. First US one-volume edition, "reproduced exactly from the second English edition, and the first to be printed in America" (Rosove), this copy inscribed by Cherry-Garrard to a family friend: "Inscribed to Alice by Apsley Cherry-Garrard with best [these two words blotted] wishes, July 7 1936", with an earlier date beneath. Copies of Worst Journey are very rarely found inscribed, Cherry-Garrard was deeply affected by his failure to save the Scott party, living a "long life of melancholy regret" (Books on Ice) and while not reclusive he socialised little. The present copy was inscribed to Alice Cairnes, whose mother's family were neighbours of Cherry-Garrard's at Lamer. With a Royal Geographical Society Christmas card laid in (incorporating a view of Mount Erebus, pictured in 1911 during Scott's last expedition), inscribed "Angela"; Cherry-Garrard married Angela Katherine Turner on 6 September 1939. 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 He was a member of the main party for the expedition's entire duration, had access to unpublished sources, and was the only member of the Winter Journey to survive the expedition.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). Octavo. Original buff linen, lettered in black on the spine. With supplied jacket. Housed in a dark blue quarter morocco solander box by the Chelsea Bindery. Colour frontispiece and 47 other plates, 5 maps, 3 of them folding. Somewhat rubbed and a little bumped at the extremities, spine tanned and chipping at head and tail, cloth on rear hinge split, endpapers browned, two relevant clippings to the front pastedown, mild toning to the text. Rosove 71.D1.b