CHARCOT, Jean B. (1825–1893). Journal de l’Expédition Antarctique Française: Le ‘Français’ au Pôle Sud. Paris: Ernest Flammarion, [1906].
Small 4to. Half–title, photographic frontispiece, 318 illustrations in text including 24 full–page plates, folding map laid in. ORIGINAL PICTORIAL WRAPPERS, uncut (few small spots of professional restoration which include four small areas of losses at ends, lower edge of upper cover and top corner of lower cover; each discretely reproduced in facsimile).
FIRST EDITION of the first official narrative of the first French Antarctic expedition, after which “Charcot returned to a hero’s welcome. The expedition had lost not a single life, almost a thousand miles of coast had been charted, and the first accurate map of western archipelago of Graham Land and had been compiled” (Howgego). The expedition surveyed the west coast of Palmer Peninsula, discovered Loubel Coast, Peltier Channel and charted the Biscoe Islands, managing to create the best charts to date of large portions of the Antarctic Peninsula and Gerlache Strait. It is “exceptional” to find a copy in the original paper wrappers and also in such attractive condition as this. “In 1906, and for many years thereafter, large and heavy productions like this would have been placed by their owners in leather bindings, disturbing the continuous pictorial impact of the wrappers” (Taurus). Conrad, p. 134; Rosove 60A1 (variant b or c); Spence 253; Taurus 54.