DE LONG, George W. (1844-1881). The Voyage of the Jeannette: The Ship and Ice Journals of… Edited by Emma DeLong. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1884.
2 volumes, royal 8vo. Frontispieces, folding map in rear pocket, numerous plates, portraits, charts and plans (some folding). Original pictorial brown cloth stamped in gilt and black (hinges partially cracked in vol. II, else fine).
FIRST EDITION. The Jeannette sailed from San Francisco into the Bering Sea and through the Bering Strait but was caught in the ice near Herald Island on 2 September 1879. For nineteen months she drifted northwest until the ship was finally crushed and sank northeast of the New Siberian Islands. Twenty-five of the thirty-three men who abandoned the ship reached the Lena Delta, but there De Long and eleven others perished due to starvation and extreme conditions. A VERY BRIGHT SET and the finest we have ever encountered of this work that is notoriously prone for falling into disrepair. Arctic Bibliography 3839.
[With:] ELLSBERG, Edward. Hell on Ice: The Saga of the “Jeannette”. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1938. 8vo. Original blue cloth; original dust jacket (extremities chipped). FIRST EDITION.