John Hunt – The Ascent of Everest – First UK Edition 1953 – SIGNED by the Author and Tom Bourdillon with letter from Bourdillon
£1,350.00
A first edition, first printing of ‘Ascent of Everest’, published by Hodder and Stoughton in 1953. A very good book without inscriptions. In a near fine dust wrapper with some light fading to the spine. SIGNED without dedication to the title page by Sir John Hunt and Tom Bourdillon. Attached and showing tape burns to the copyright page is a letter (now laid in) on ‘British Mount Everest Expedition 1953’- headed notepaper (dated 9/2/53) from Tom Bourdillon to a Lord Acheron (sic). The letter thanks the addressee for the recent cheque which, Bourdillon explains, will fund ‘some future expedition’. He goes on to say that he hopes to play squash at Harrow and to see him there…Bourdillon would die in a climbing accident three years later, on 29 July 1956, while ascending the east buttress of the Jägihorn in the Bernese Oberland.
With his father, Robert Bourdillon, he developed the closed-circuit bottled oxygen apparatus used by Charles Evans and himself on their climb to the South Summit of Everest on 26 May 1953. Bourdillon could have been either the first or second man to officially reach the summit of Everest, but he was forced back when Evans’s oxygen system failed. The pair came within 300 feet (91 m) of the Main Summit; both turning back after reaching the South Summit. Three days later, Hunt directed Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay to go for the Main Summit, using open-circuit equipment; which they reached on 29 May 1953. Bourdillon never attempted an Everest expedition again.
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- Description
Description
A first edition, first printing of ‘Ascent of Everest’, published by Hodder and Stoughton in 1953. A very good book without inscriptions. In a near fine dust wrapper with some light fading to the spine. SIGNED without dedication to the title page by Sir John Hunt and Tom Bourdillon. Attached and showing tape burns to the copyright page is a letter (now laid in) on ‘British Mount Everest Expedition 1953’- headed notepaper (dated 9/2/53) from Tom Bourdillon to a Lord Acheron (sic). The letter thanks the addressee for the recent cheque which, Bourdillon explains, will fund ‘some future expedition’. He goes on to say that he hopes to play squash at Harrow and to see him there…Bourdillon would die in a climbing accident three years later, on 29 July 1956, while ascending the east buttress of the Jägihorn in the Bernese Oberland.
With his father, Robert Bourdillon, he developed the closed-circuit bottled oxygen apparatus used by Charles Evans and himself on their climb to the South Summit of Everest on 26 May 1953. Bourdillon could have been either the first or second man to officially reach the summit of Everest, but he was forced back when Evans’s oxygen system failed. The pair came within 300 feet (91 m) of the Main Summit; both turning back after reaching the South Summit. Three days later, Hunt directed Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay to go for the Main Summit, using open-circuit equipment; which they reached on 29 May 1953. Bourdillon never attempted an Everest expedition again.
