17 - [ARCTIC] NANSEN, Fridtjof. Across Greenland.

[ARCTIC] NANSEN, Fridtjof. Across Greenland. First French edition. From the library of Paul-Emile Victor. Paris, Hachette et Cie, 1893. Large quarto, red coarse-grained half-shagreen with corner caps, ribbed spine, panels adorned with a gilt fleur-de-lis, gilt head. IV and 395 pp., 170 black-and-white illustrations and a color fold-out map at the end. Binding scuffed at the corners, edges, and joints, with a tear in the upper cap; foxing on the edges; margins slightly foxed. First French edition, translated from Norwegian by the geographer and explorer Charles Rabot (1856–1944). This account of the legendary 1888 expedition led by the Norwegian and future Nobel Peace Prize laureate Fridtjof Nansen (1861–1930) recounts the very first successful east-to-west crossing of the Greenland ice sheet. It was accomplished using sleds pulled by men and skis, a revolutionary approach for the time. From the library of Paul-Emile Victor (1907–1995), with his bookplate featuring a compass. Greenland was the French explorer’s chosen land; he conducted his first ethnographic research there as early as 1934 before organizing, starting in 1949, the scientific campaigns of the French Polar Expeditions. A fine copy in a period binding.