Outline Sketches in the High Alps of Dauphine

Description

Published by Longman Green Longman Roberts & Green, London, 1865, 1st Edition, 52 pp, 13 plates, spine in poor condition with pieces missing top and bottom plus wear to edges, corners bumped, Hence book Poor/Good, but internally and plates V.G.   The Reverend Thomas George Bonney (1833-1923) was an English geologist, an ordained minister and a mountaineer.  While he is best known as a geologist, much of his field work was in Alpine regions, where he travelled and climbed extensively for over 50 years.  This volume is an account of 4 climbing holidays to the Dauphine in 1862 to 1864 “illustrated  by many of his own simple but attractive mountain sketches” (Neate).  His other main published work on mountaineering was The Alpine Regions of Switzerland and the Neighbouring Countries (1868).  His climbing career, from 1856 to 1911, was summarised in his popular geology work The Building of the Alps (1912) as “about 110 definite ascents, 65 of them up to or above 10,000 ft, and crossed, almost always on foot, more than 150 passes, 36 of them above that altitude”.  As well as being professor of geology at University College London (1877-1901) and President of the Geological Society of London (1884-1886), he was also the President of The Alpine Club (1881-1883).  Lake Bonney in Antarctica was named after him by the British Antarctic Expedition 1910-1913 (led by Robert Falcon Scott).