Alexander’s book, which drew on new source material, birthed two separate Shackleton documentary films, and more media projects followed in its wake. In 1998, British author Caroline Alexander published T he Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Expedition. Shackleton and his men have been the subject of much media fervor throughout the last century, and this latest flurry of Shackleton media comes more than two decades after the tale experienced a worldwide revival. The story still resonates with readers more than a century later: the sinking of Endurance amid the pack ice the bone-rattling conditions on Elephant Island the improbable 800-mile journey across windblown seas in the 22-foot James Caird the mountainous trek across South Georgia Island to finally raise a rescue party. It makes you feel a sense of connection across the years to a very different age – yet one in which, as now, signed copies of books seem to be worth more to collectors.The recent discovery of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurancehas thrust his epic tale of Antarctic survival into the limelight once again. “Ink blots on the reverse of the page seem to show the haste with which each copy was signed. “The book includes the signature of every member of the shore party who made the trek,” says Suzanne. He died on the island of South Georgia in 1922 as he travelled yet again to the frozen South. In 1914 Shackleton’s ship “The Endurance” was crushed by ice, and he travelled 720 miles across South Atlantic Seas to find help, an adventure which made him even more famous. Though he survived the expedition described in “The Heart of the Antarctic,” Shackleton’s later expeditions were ill-fated. However, the shelf-mark on the old card catalogue for this item was still valid and it was fetched by Special Collections colleagues without any problem.” “In 1980, when we bought our first computer, we had to re-describe over a million volumes, and some of them simply got missed given the scale of the task. Richard Espley, Head of Modern Collections, adds: “The book had been carefully described on a card, and the book kept in very safe storage, but had never been described on the electronic catalogue, so that we essentially didn't know that we owned it.” “I was searching the archives as advanced planning for a potential exhibition in the Library, to find titles owned by the University relating to Shackleton,” says Suzanne. Now, one hundred years after Shackleton’s untimely death on the island of South Georgia, a copy of the signed edition has been discovered by a member of Library staff, Suzanne Canally, as she worked through old library cards used to catalogue items before the introduction of computers. To capitalise on this success Shackleton’s publishers asked Shackleton to sign 300 copies of a deluxe edition, which were sold on a “first come, first served” basis to wealthy collectors. With Shackleton’s celebrity already matching that of his rivals, Captain Robert Scott and Roald Amundson, “The Heart of the Antarctic” was a bestseller on publication in 1909. One hundred years after his death, a rare book signed by Polar adventurer and hero Ernest Shackleton has been unearthed by an intrepid librarian in the unfathomed depths of the University of London’s Senate House Library.
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