Icebound: The Jeannette Expedition’s Quest for the North Pole

First edition, first impression. xx, 358pp, with some black and white illustrations in text.  Burnt umber cloth-covered boards, gilt lettering to spine.  Maps on coloured endpapers.  8vo.  Cloth is rounded and a little rubbed at corners and spine ends, else neat, clean, bright and tight throughout.  Glossy, illustrated dust jacket, not price clipped, shelf worn, a little rubbed on extreme edges and markedly sunned along spine.

The doomed Jeannette expedition, under the leadership of George Washington de Long, left San Francisco Bay in 1879, in search of the North Pole.  Just months into the voyage, the ship was locked into an ice pack near Herald Island, drifting endlessly for nearly two years until the pressure cracked the hull, stranding the crew some 600 miles from open water.  Just 13 of the 33-strong crew of explores survived.  This is their story.