[SHACKLETON (Ernest)].
Aurora Australis.
THE FIRST FACSIMILE EDITION
Described in the introductory booklet, by John Millard with an introduction by Lord Shackleton, as “the first public edition”. Before this, the contents of Aurora Autralis were largely inaccessible to the wider world.
Number 57 of 58 copies produced by Bluntisham Books. This number corresponds to the extant copies of the first edition known at the time of publication.
A lovingly reproduced facsimile of the most famous rarity of Antarctic bibliography. The Aurora Australis was a remarkable feat of book production - written, edited, illustrated, printed and bound in a small hut at Cape Royds on the edge of the Antarctic sea in the winter of 1908 by the members of Ernest Shackleton’s Nimrod expedition. The original production made canny use of expedition materials, most famously the plywood supply packing cases for the boards of each copy, meaning that many bear partial stencils from the boxes indicating their former contents. This edition recreates elements of the original, and is bound in plywood.
Rosove, 304.B1
