PACKE (Charles) - Lot 280

PACKE (Charles) A Guide to the Pyrenees especially intended for the Use of Mountaineers. With maps, Diagrams, and Tables. Second Edition, rewritten and much enlarged (May 1867). London, Longmans, Green & Co, 1867. Small square in-8: XX, 202pp, 1f (new items); woodcut frontispiece, 2 colored lithographed geological plates, one colored engraved folding map (Map of the Pyrenees, South of Luchon), all out of text, and 2 large loose folding maps, folded and stored in the flaps of the boards (les Monts Maudits, 1866, in 2 tones; and Central Pyrenees, monochrome). All maps are drawn by the author. Free insert of a photograph by Charles Packe. Publisher's plum-colored percaline boards, title in gilt medallion on upper board, partial crack to first board. A good copy. Second edition, the most complete for the text, which is in fact the third edition, as the very rare 1864 edition is a reissue of the no less rare 1862 original. Some copies of this work bear the stamp of the bookseller Lafon de Luchon, which proves that this guide was also distributed in our mountains, but it's true that Shakespeare's language was not widely spoken in the massif at the time. "This guide represents, in purpose and tone, the first guide to the high mountains ever published". The author studied brilliantly at Oxford and became a barrister in 1852. He would plead only one cause: the Pyrenees, which he discovered in 1853. His career as a climber began with a failed attempt on the Balaïtous in 1862. He tried again in 1864 and, after 10 days of trial and error, finally reached the summit to discover the remains left by Peytier the year he was born! After that, no summit would resist him, but that was not his goal. For him, the mountains remained a field of scientific investigation. With his masterly map of the Monts Maudits in 1866, and this now mythical Guidebook, the very British Packe entered the pantheon of great Pyrenean climbers. His friend Henry Russell is no stranger to well-deserved fame (Labarère 1130)(Duloum 22, 480-481).