Lot 530
  • 530

Freshfield, Douglas W.

Estimate
2,500 - 3,500 GBP
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Description

  • Freshfield, Douglas W.
  • The Exploration of the Caucasus. London: Edward Arnold, 1896
  • paper
FIRST EDITION, LIMITED LARGE PAPER EDITION, number 99 of 100 copies, 2 volumes, 4to (310 x 220mm.), (vol.1) [ii limitation leaf], xxiv, 278pp.; (vol.2) x, 296pp., 4 folding maps [3 coloured, 1 in pocket of vol.2], 3 folding photogravure panoramas [1 with folding key leaf], 76 photo illustrations [74 photogravures], original vellum-backed light brown buckram boards, top edges gilt, others uncut, slipcase, occasional slight spotting

Freshfield first climbed Mont Blanc as a schoolboy, made at least twenty first ascents in the 1860s and 1870s, chiefly of lesser known-peaks in the Italian Alps, and was president of the Alpine Club from 1893 to 1895. "In 1868 he explored, together with Charles Tucker, Adolphus Moor, and his lifelong friend François Devouassoud, the central Caucasus, which, except for the lower heights, were then unknown. He made the first ascent of Kazbek (16,546 ft), Elbrus (18,470 ft), and several other peaks, and recorded the existence of large glaciers in the regions between them. After returning to the Caucasus in 1887 and 1889 he published his Exploration of the Caucasus (1896), which was for a time a standard work. In 1899 he visited India, Burma, and Ceylon, and made, with Dr Edmund Johnston Garwood, the circuit of Kanchenjunga through unmapped territory in Sikkim and Nepal, recorded in Round Kanchenjunga (1903) [see lot 532]. Lastly, in 1905, at the age of sixty, he tried, with A. L. Mumm, to ascend Ruwenzori in Uganda, then known as the Mountains of the Moon, but was stopped by bad weather and mud at 12,000 ft." (ODNB).


Provenance

Arthur Bird, the Grange, Great Bookham, bookplate

Condition

A good copy
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