Bound in Venesta packing case boards, rebacked in quarter leather cow with original cowhide spine inset

Aurora Australis was the first book to be produced entirely in Antarctica. The idea of an expedition newsletter was not new in polar exploration (as is demonstrated by the South Polar Times of Scott’s Discovery expedition), but an actual publication had not been attempted. Shackleton returned to the Antarctic with a printing press, paper, type and plate-making equipment, all donated by the printing firm of Joseph Causton & Sons. Frank Wild and Ernest Joyce took a quick course in printing before they left England, sufficient to be able, after a couple of weeks’ practice, to produce two pages a day. The difficulties were considerable. ‘A lamp had to be placed under the type-rack to keep it warm, and a lighted candle was put under the inking-plate, so that the ink would keep reasonably thin in consistency’. The biologist James Murray described the cramped conditions: ‘The work had to be done … in a small room occupied by fifteen men, all of them following their own avocations, with whatever of noise, vibration and dirt might be incidental to them’. No more than 80 copies of the book were ever produced, according to Shackleton himself in a letter to Pierpont Morgan, 25 July 1911 . The copies were bound in boards prepared by Bernard Day, from Venesta packing cases. Surviving bound copies are often known by the commodity advertised on the boards. This is the only known copy with boards from crates used to transport mock turtle soup. Shackleton begged indulgence from his readers: ‘I trust that all who have a copy will think kindly of the first attempt to print a book and illustrate it in the depth of an Antarctic Winter’. The book featured articles on the first ever ascent of Mount Erebus, a comic account of the ‘Trials of a Messman’, and an encounter with an Emperor penguin. Shackleton noted in the preface that in the ‘months lit only by vagrant moon and elusive aurora; we have found in this work an interest and a relaxation, and hope eventually it will prove the same to our friends in the distant Northland’.