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Item #: OP138F-843
HIGH ADVENTURE 1955 1st UK ed Hardcover SIGNED by 8: John Hunt, Edmund Hillary, George Lowe, Charles Wylie, Alfred Gregory, Jan Morris, Michael Westmacott, George Band, Michael Ward
By Hillary, Edmund
Price: $1200.00


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London, 1955, 1st UK edition. 224 pp, 26 plates with 68 b/w photographs. Frontispiece is in color, and there are many maps, route diagrams, and delightful pen and ink sketches by George Djurkouic. The book is a navy blue cloth cobered hardcover in Near Fine condition. There is a slight cant to the spine. There is a short gift inscription from Christmas 1955 on the front endpaper.  This copy has a handsome Dust Jacket, minor edge wear, and is price clipped. Near Fine overall.

This copy is Signed on the title page by Ed Hillary, John Hunt, George Lowe, Charles Wylie, Alfred Gregory, Jan Morris, Michael Westmacott, George Band, Michael Ward and possibly Peter Lloyd who was on the 1938 Tilman led Everest expedition.  


To see a copy of Ed Hillary's book with so many signatures of his team mates is unusual. When we met with him, from the early 1990s to 2007, we often had copies of this book for him to sign. But we never met all the other team members, so the only way we see signed by the whole 1953 team is when we acquire copies like this one, which we recently purchased from an old customer, who probably bought it from a British bookseller 22 years ago. 

There were two times when the entire Everest team got together in England, and books were signed by the entire team. Those meetings occurred in 1993 and in 2003.

To commemerate the 40th anniversray of the first ascent of Mount Everest, in 1993 the Alpine Club and RGS re-issued Hunt's 1953 Ascent Of Everest and were selling autographed copies signed by the whole team for £60. Those are now fetching US $1500-$2500.  

Also, a few British booksellers and collectors attended some of the events that week and had actual first editions of the major books on Everest, which they had signed by as many people as they could corral.  I believe this copy of Hillary's first book was signed at that time. 

Ten years later, in 2003 there were events celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Everest first ascent. Ed Hillary attended many of these events, as did the remaining surivivors of the 1953 expedition. We attended one of those events in San Francisco.  

This is Hillary's primary book on his Everest climb. It includes an early description of the two Shipton led warm up expeditions, the first in 1951 was an Everest Reconnaissance expedition, and the other in 1952 was a Cho Oyu attempt. In 1954 and 1955 when Ed wrote this book he did not yet know that he would become the most famous mountain climber who ever lived, and that he would become a celebrity who was recognized and respected throughout the world. 

He (or his publisher) made the decision to write the book focused mostly on the 1953 Everest climb. Hillary went on to have a life filled with rewarding work and other adventures. In later books he devoted more space to his other pre-Everest climbs, but in 1955 the demand was clearly on Everest.   

In 1953, when he was thirty-three years old, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing became the first men to stand at the summit of Mount Everest. High Adventure is Hillary's definitive and entertaining memoir of his Himalayan quest. It takes us step by-step up the slopes of Everest, describing vividly and in great detail the agonizing climb that he and Tenzing Norgay embarked upon, the perils they faced, and the dramatic final ascent that forever secured them a place of honor in the annals of human exploration.

By conquering Everest, the beekeeper and the Sherpa affirmed the power of humble determination -- and won one for underdogs everywhere.  On May 29, 1953 at 11:30 AM, Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay of Nepal became the first human beings to conquer Mount Everest-- Chomolungma, to its people -- at 29,028 ft. the highest place on earth.

By any rational standards, this was no big deal. Aircraft had long before flown over the summit, and within a few decades literally hundreds (now thousands) of people from many nations would climb Everest. And what is particularly remarkable, anyway, about getting to the top of a mountain? Geography was not furthered by the achievement, scientific progress was scarcely hastened, and nothing new was discovered.

The  names of Hillary and Tenzing went instantly into all languages as the names of heroes, partly because they really were men of heroic mold but chiefly because they represented so compellingly the spirit of their time. The world of the early 1950s was still a little punch-drunk from World War II, which had ended less than a decade before. Everything was changing. All men who were of military age in the 1940s knew that by being alive they had cheated death. They knew very well that the British had a difficult time finding men who could climb high and who had survived WWI. Mallory and everybody else  who went to Everest in the 1920s and 1930s were alive simply  because they were damn lucky. 

The 1950s were really the same. When the Americans finally attempted Everest, and succeeded in the 1960s, they had to wait for a the new generation of climbers to mature. Our next teams, like Jim and Lou Whittaker, both were too young by a hair to be in combat in then 1940s. 

This book is a record of Hillary's climbing experiences through the first ascent of Mount Everest where he and Tenzing Norgay reached the summit. Hillary’s excitement, energy, and drive for mountaineering are apparent here. The passages relating his first encounter, and then climbs, with Eric Shipton are delightful. 

Also, his high esteem for George Lowe, Tenzing, and John Hunt is apparent. The book includes Hillary's adventures in the Nepal Himalaya prior to the 1953 Everest expedition: a Solu Khumbu reconnaissance with Shipton and Ang Tharkay, the 1952 Cho Oyu attempt and crossing the Nup La.



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