# Narrative of an Ascent to the Summit of Mont Blanc, on the 8th and 9th August, 1827



**Autore:** Auldjo John

**Dati editoriali:** London, Printed for Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1828

**Codice archivio:** 189

**Prezzo:** 2600.00 USD

**Stato commerciale:** Disponibile

**Link ufficiale:** https://www.govirarebooks.com/products/auldjo-mont-blanc-ascent-1828

---

## Descrizione accademica e analisi

Large 4to (325×255 mm). ix, [3], 120 pp., with 22 plates, maps and charts: seven lithographs on India paper; eleven further lithographs, including a folding panorama; and four maps and charts, three folding and two coloured. Contemporary boards, with a lettering-piece on the spine. Some scattered foxing and browning, one quire loose, but a very good, genuine copy, uncut with deckle edges. Provenance: Caroline [surname unresolved], contemporary manuscript inscription on the recto of the front free endpaper, recording the volume as “The Gift of her Father”, dated apparently 6 June 1828. First edition. Important early illustrated narrative of mountaineering, bringing together personal adventure, Alpine landscape and the visual documentation of an ascent. Born in Montreal in 1805, Auldjo attended Trinity College, Cambridge, before undertaking a continental tour. His ascent of Mont Blanc in August 1827, shortly after his twenty-second birthday, supplied the subject of this first book. He subsequently pursued the same combination of travel, observation and drawing in southern Italy, publishing Sketches of Vesuvius in 1832. The two works reveal an author for whom the experience of extraordinary natural environments was inseparable from their representation in print. The appeal of the Narrative lies in the relationship between the imposing landscape and the vulnerability of the traveller moving through it. Auldjo’s account gives prominence to the practical difficulties of glacier travel, dangerous crossings, fatigue and the assistance of his guides. Its subject is not simply the achievement of a summit, but the succession of physical and emotional experiences through which that achievement was reached. The narrative and its illustrations allow the reader to follow the expedition as a sequence of obstacles and decisions, rather than contemplating the mountain only as a distant prospect. The illustrations unite two complementary approaches. The Alpine prospects derive largely from drawings by Samuel Birmann, while Auldjo supplied the climbing scenes; Charles Hullmandel was responsible for the lithography. In his study of the representation of the Grands Mulets, J. Monroe Thorington distinguished these contributions and noted affinities between some of Auldjo’s climbing pictures and those in Charles Fellows’s earlier narrative. The scenic views establish the scale and character of the landscape; the scenes of movement across ice and rock introduce danger, practical ingenuity and human dependence. Their juxtaposition gives the volume both the breadth of a landscape album and the immediacy of an illustrated expedition account. The maps, panorama, comparative tables and facsimile certificate perform different functions within this arrangement. The maps locate the expedition, the panorama relates individual peaks to the surrounding massif, and the geological and height comparisons place Mont Blanc within a wider geographical framework. The reproduced certificate supplies a documentary counterpart to the first-person narrative. The result is more than a collection of picturesque illustrations: the reader is offered successive ways of understanding the mountain - as scenery, route, physical structure and the site of an authenticated undertaking. The book can not be considered as the first illustrated account of an ascent of Mont Blanc, as it was preceded by Fellows’s illustrated narrative appeared in 1827. A second edition appeared in 1830, recast in octavo. A third edition followed in 1856, published by Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans.

---

## Bibliografia di riferimento

Thorington, J. Monroe. “The Grands Mulets in Alpine Illustration.” The Alpine Journal 38 (1926): 189-203, especially 195-196; Neate, Jill. Mountaineering Literature: A Bibliography of Material Published in English. 2nd ed. Milnthorpe-Seattle:, 1986, no. A75. Meckly, Eugene P. Mont Blanc: The Early Years. A Bibliography of Printed Books from 1744 to 1860. Asheville, NC, 1995, no. 008; Perret, Jacques. Guide des livres sur la montagne et l’alpinisme. 2 vols. Grenoble, 1997, no. 0183.

---

*Documento generato automaticamente dall'Archivio Govi Rare Books per finalità di ricerca e catalogazione.*