30


30. Cunningham, C. D. & W. de W. Abney. The Pioneers of the Alps. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, and Rivington, 1887. £675


First edition. Folio. pp. xi, 287; twenty-four photogravure portraits including dedication leaf, one full-page illustration of ice-axes, illusts. to text; occasional foxing, else good in original red cloth boards, gilt, t.e.g., rebacked with new spine and endpapers.


8


Wäber I.105; Neate C156; Perret 1173. A beautifully evocative record of the silver age of Alpinism. The list of entries - Melchior Anderegg, Christian Almer, François Devouassoud, Jean-Antoine Carrel, Emile Rey, and others - is a roll call of the most important Alpine guides of the later nineteenth century. Superb portrait photogravures accompany each biography in this wonderfully produced volume. A second edition, in slightly smaller format, was published the following year (see next item).


31


31. Cunningham, C. D. & W. de W. Abney. The Pioneers of the Alps. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, and Rivington, 1888. £475


Second edition. Folio. pp. viii, 180; twenty-three photogravure portraits including dedication leaf, one full-page illustration of ice-axes, illusts. to text; minor foxing, else very good in original red cloth, gilt.


Wäber I.105; Neate C156; Perret 1173. The second edition of the preceding work.


32. Cunningham, C. D. & W. de W. Abney, eds. A Facsimile of Christian Almer’s Führerbuch 1856-1894. London: Sampson Low, Marston & Company, 1896.


£4,750


First edition, one of “200 copies” [in fact only 68]. 8vo. pp. [ii, limitation leaf], [i, half-title], xxxii, 261; photogravure portrait frontispiece of Almer; age-toning to text, else good in original buckram, leather lettering-pieces to spine, which are somewhat chipped, a.e.g., rubbed, still a good copy. The Oriental Club copy, with its bookplate, the book presented by C. D. Cunningham in January 1896.


Neate C157; Perret 0065. Christian Almer (1826-1898) became one of the foremost guides of his generation, his career distinguished by the number of first ascents he made - the Mönch, the Eiger, the Aiguille Verte and Les Droites on the Mont Blanc massif, among many others. His Führerbuch - a record of statements made by the climbers he guided in the Alps - “is to mountaineers probably the most interesting manuscript volume relating to the Alps which exists” (Cunningham’s Introduction p. v). Among those who recorded their climbs with him are Edward Whymper, H. B. George, Leslie Stephen, W. A. B. Coolidge, A. W. Moore, G. S. Studer and Francis Fox Tuckett. As Cunningham remarked, “I doubt if any other guide’s book contains the signatures of so many Herren, distinguished not only as climbers, but well known in the foremost ranks of literature, science, law and divinity” (ibid.). The publication of the facsimile, limited in any case to 200 copies, led to a controversy between the editors and Coolidge, who featured prominently in the Führerbuch, having been guided by Almer to several first ascents of his own. The disagreement (covered by Ronald Clark in his account of Coolidge, An Eccentric in the Alps, 1959) resulted in the destruction of many of the copies - Neate declares that only 68 survived. Of these, it is unclear how many now survive, and indeed copies rarely come on to the market.


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