Captain Cook

London: Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1904. vi, 191pp, [3]. With an engraved portrait frontispiece and a final leaf of publisher's advertisements. Original publisher's red cloth, lettered in gilt. Without dustwrapper. Lightly rubbed and marked, spine sunned. Hinges partially exposed, bookplate of George Lowe to FEP. An early edition of Walter Besant's (1836-1901) biography of famed explorer Captain James Cook (1728-1779). From the library of New Zealand-born mountaineer George Lowe (1924-2013), a member of the 1953 British Mount Everest expedition, the ninth mountaineering expedition to attempt the first ascent of Everest, and the first confirmed to have succeeded when Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary reached the summit on 29th May. The day prior, Lowe had led an advance guard, wielding an ice axe with legendary skill, to cut a path into the Lhotse Face to the final camp (1,000 feet below the peak), preparing the route for Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. Following this achievement Lowe became a New Zealand representative on the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition which, between 1955 and 1958, not only traversed Antarctica, becoming the first to reach the South Pole by land since Amundsen in 1911 and Scott in 1912, but also carried out extensive surveying of the continent. . 8vo.