The Books Shackleton Took to Antarctica

As was recently reported, the Royal Geographic Society in London digitized a photograph that was taken in 1915 of Sir Ernest Shackelton’s Antarctic library by Frank Hurley. They were then able to discern the book titles, which I have linked to WorldCat and any open copy I could find. Just imagine, you can read a book that Shackleton may have read before the Endurance was crushed in the pack ice and sank.

As you review the list of books he selected to take to one of the remotest parts of our planet, keep in mind that this happened long before the author of Harry Potter was born.

Books on Shackleton’s bookshelf:

• Encyclopedia Britannica
• Seven short plays by Lady Gregory [ open copy at Internet Archive ]
• Perch of the Devil by Gertrude Atherton [ open copy at Internet Archive ]
• Pip by Ian Hey
• Plays: Pleasant and Unpleasant, Vol 2 Pleasant by G B Shaw [ open copy at Internet Archive ]
• Almayer’s Folly by Joseph Conrad [ open copy at Internet Archive ]
• Dr Brewer’s Readers Handbook 
• The Brassbounder by David Bone [ open copy at Internet Archive ]
• The Case of Miss Elliott by Emma Orczy, Baroness
• Raffles by EW Hornung [ open copy at HathiTrust ]
• The Grand Babylon Hotel by Arnold Bennett [ open copy at Internet Archive ]
• Pros and Cons: A Newspaper Reader’s and Debater’s Guide to the Leading Controversies of the Day by JB Askew
• The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky [ open copy at UIUC ]
• The Woman’s View by Herbert Flowerdew
• Thou Fool! by JJ Bell [ open copy at HathiTrust ]
• The Message of Fate by Louis Tracy
• The Barrier by Rex Beach [ open copy at Internet Archive ]
• Manual of English Grammar and Composition by Nesfield
• A Book of Light Verse by R M Leonard
• Oddsfish! by Robert Hugh Benson
• Poetical Works of Shelley [ open copy at Internet Archive ]
• Monsieur de Rochefort by H De Vere Stacpoole
• Voyage of the Vega by Nordenskjold [ open copy at Internet Archive ]
• The Threshold of the Unknown Region by Clements Markham [ open copy at Internet Archive ]
• Cassell’s Book of Quotations by W Gurney Benham
• The Concise Oxford Dictionary
• Chambers Biographical Dictionary
• Cassell’s New German-English English-German Dictionary
• Chambers 20th Century Dictionary
• The Northwest Passage by Roald Amundsen [ open copy at The World Digital Library ]
• The Voyage of the Fox in Arctic Seas by McClintock [ open copy at Internet Archive ]
• Whitaker’s Almanac
• World’s End by Amelie Rives [ open copy at Internet Archive ]
• Potash and Perlmutter by Montague Glass [ open copy at Internet Archive ]
• Round the Horn Before the Mast by A Basil Lubbock [ open copy at Internet Archive ]
• The Witness for the Defence by AEW Mason [ open copy at Internet Archive ]
• Five Years of My Life by Alfred Dreyfuss [ open copy at Internet Archive ]
• The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne by William J Locke [ open copy at Internet Archive ]
• The Rescue of Greely by Commander Winfield Scott Schley [ open copy at Internet Archive ]
• United States Grinnell Expedition by Dr Kane [ open copy at Google ]
• Three Years of Arctic Service by AW Greely [ open copy at Internet Archive ]
• Voyage to the Polar Sea by Nares [ open copy at Biodversity Heritage Library ]
• Journal of HMS Enterprise by Collinson

Roy Tennant

Roy Tennant works on projects related to improving the technological infrastructure of libraries, museums, and archives.

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