Flying the Arctic
New York, Putnam, [July] 1928 (first edition).
Octavo, xvi, 336 pages plus 31 plates.
Original brown cloth lettered in gilt on the spine and the front cover; cloth lightly watermarked (mainly near the bottom edges of both covers); light tidemark to the blank bottom corner of some leaves and plates near the front and rear of the book; these inoffensive blemishes notwithstanding, a very good copy with the colour pictorial dustwrapper (designed by Chas K. Stevens) a little rubbed and lightly tidemarked, with two short pieces of clear tape stabilizing trifling blemishes to the spine.
The account of the first successful flight of '2,200 miles across the top of the world, from Point Barrow to Spitsbergen' by the South Australian-born Wilkins and Carl Ben Eielson on their third attempt. This copy is inscribed and signed in ink by Wilkins on the dedication page ('Hubert Wilkins Nov 25th 1930'). The book is relatively common - it was quickly reprinted twice - but copies of the first edition, complete with the dustwrapper, are scarce, and signed copies with contemporary inscriptions may be classed as rare. Sir George Hubert Wilkins (1888-1958), 'war correspondent and photographer, polar explorer, naturalist, geographer, climatologist and aviator' ('Australian Dictionary of Biography'); it is not apparent from this heady list that on the Western Front in June 1918, he was awarded the Military Cross. In September 1918 he was 'Awarded a Bar to his M.C., [and] he was also mentioned in dispatches'.
Item #110587
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