A rare copy of a book by the explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton has sold at auction for £43,200.
Aurora Australis, named after the spectacular sky lights of the Southern hemisphere, was discovered at the bottom of a filing cabinet by a Kent family.
It was sold for to an anonymous buyer by Bonhams in London on Tuesday as part of their Prints, Books and Manuscripts auction.
The book was edited and published by Shackleton (1874-1922) and his fellow explorers during their Nimrod expedition to Antarctica from 1907-1909. Archivists believe that only 80 copies were ever printed and just 65 have survived in the world.
The hand-printed edition of Shackleton's book, dated 1908, with a front cover illustration showing the Aurora Australis, was brought into Bonhams, in Sevenoaks, during a routine valuation day.
It had been found at the bottom of a filing cabinet wrapped in an old plastic bag by a Mr Clark, from Farnborough, near Orpington, while he was clearing out the house of a close relative.
William Richards, of Bonhams in Sevenoaks, said: "I knew when I first saw this edition at our Sevenoaks office that it was rather special, so we asked our London book department to come down and look at it and they confirmed that it was one of Shackleton's original copies."
A member of Mr Clark's family knew two of the explorers on Shackleton's expedition - Ernest Joyce and Frank Wild - and inside, the book is inscribed, "To our old Pal Tom ....., Wishing you the best of luck. From the printers Ernest Joyce and Frank Wild."
David Park, group director of Bonhams' Books and Manuscripts, said: "This book is really the black tulip of any Antarctic collection and this discovery is all the more extraordinary because the owners didn't realise they still possessed a copy.
"It had been given directly to an earlier generation of the family at the turn of the 20th century."
Prior to his own expedition on the Nimrod, Shackleton had edited The South Polar Times, which had been published in England to commemorate Scott's first expedition to the South Pole.
Shackleton understood the value of the printed word and when he planned his own voyage he decided to take a press to help record the spectacles of Antarctica. He also made sure that Wild and Joyce had some print training before leaving England.
During the expedition the men realised that they didn't have suitable binding materials so the ship's electrician and mechanic, Bernard Day, inventively came up with the idea of using boards from their supply crates and spare harness leather for the spines.
The copy of Aurora Australis was sold by Bonhams with a long autograph letter from Ernest Joyce to his friend Tom. In it, he describes their departure from New Zealand in heavy gales and the eventual sighting of Antarctica: "The Great Ice Barrier is worth seeing as it's over 500 miles long...."
Talking of their planned assault on the South Pole after the winter, he says confidently, "I'm sure we will break all records."
The Nimrod trip did break new ground with Shackleton and his team successfully climbing Mount Erebus, but it wasn't Shackleton's first trip to Antarctica or his last.
In 1901 he had been part of Robert Falcon Scott's Antarctic team and together with Scott trekked the closest to the South Pole that any expedition had managed. In 1908 he led his own team on the Nimrod.
Then in 1915, after Scott's ill- fated 1911 trip, Shackleton set off on the ship Endurance, unaware that this would be his most notorious expedition, where his life and those of his fellow crew members were jeopardised after the ship became trapped by pack ice.
The men had to abandon the vessel, which was slowly crushed and sunk, and they lived on the floating ice for several months. At the end of the winter they set off for Elephant Island and from there Shackleton took five crew members to fetch help.
They took 16 days to cross 1,300 km of freezing sea to reach South Georgia and then had to cross the island on foot to a whaling station to raise the alarm. The remaining expedition members were rescued from Elephant Island in August 1916 and amazingly, none of the men died.
Shackleton himself died from a heart attack on South Georgia during his fourth expedition in 1922.
POSTED: 26/06/2007 17:42:07
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