Beschreibung:

Cherry-Garrard (Apsley, 1886-1959). The Worst Journey in the World: Antarctic 1910-1913, One Volume Edition [Library Edition], London: published by the author and distributed for him by Chatto & Windus, 1951, coloured frontispiece, 8 plain plates and 4 maps including 2 folding, signed ink presentation inscription from the author to front free endpaper, 'To Mrs Reynell in gratitude, 1947 to 1951, from Apsley Cherry-Garrard, October 25th 1951, partly uncut, original blue cloth gilt in dust jacket, slightly dust-soiled and chipped at edges, with a little loss to upper margins, large 8vo (Qty: 1) Spence 286. The first edition of Cherry-Garrard's Antarctic Classic to contain the author's Postscript written in 1948. A nice copy of an important association item. The recipient of this copy was Una Mary, the widow of the psychiatrist Walter Rupert Reynell (1885-1948). Cherry-Garrard had been deeply affected by the deaths, particularly those of Wilson and Bowers, with whom he had made the journey to Cape Crozier on Robert Falcon Scott's Terranova Expedition. He suffered from depression and what is now called post-traumatic stress disorder for the rest of his life. Cherry continually revisited the question of what alternative choices and actions might have saved the South Pole team, notably in this classic book, The Worst Journey in the World, first published in 1922. Rupert Reynell was one of the psychiatrists who looked after him from 1947 and got him on his feet again after a cataleptic stroke in the summer of 1946, which had left him bedridden for nearly a year. Sadly, Cherry's good friend Reynell died suddenly in 1948, but for some six years Cherry was mentally happy and became interested in, among other things, book-collecting and cruising in the Mediterranean. However, with inexplicable suddenness Cherry broke down again in the Autumn of 1953, being thereafter cared for by Dr. Gordon Mathias until his death in 1959.