Scott of the Antarctic [Paperback]

Elspeth Josceline Huxley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 1990

After Robert Peary claimed to have reached the North Pole in 1909, polar explorers looked toward the South. Robert Falcon Scott, whose 1901–1904 expedition into Antarctica's frozen shoulder had made him a celebrity in England, began plans to return. In June1910 the Terra Nova sailed toward the earth's underbelly.

When Scott's party reached the South Pole on January 17,1912, after severe hardships, they discovered that the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen had beat them to it a month before. Demoralized, frozen, exhausted, and starved, they started to retrace their painful steps over the ice but were forced to stop only eleven miles from a supply depot. By a supreme act of will, the captain managed to write his last letters, which were found with the bodies in November.

Elspeth Huxley draws on those letters and diaries in her luminous biography. It reaches back to Scott's first voyage to the Antarctic, introduces the charming sculptor he married in middle age after a whirlwind of self-doubt, and builds up to the last expedition—a marvel of teamwork—that will always be remembered for the nobility shown by men facing death. The story of Robert Falcon Scott is all the more interesting because he was a complex, self-questioning man whose conquest of the self was "a feat perhaps more admirable than the conquest of the Pole."

Editorial Reviews

Review

"[This] book is one of the finest to be written about the Antarctic and it certainly towers above any other biography of Scott. . . . [Elspeth Huxley] with compassion, insight, and imagination, follows [him] toward the Pole, failure, and death."—Economist

(Economist )

"In this book [Huxley] proves again that there is no subject she cannot illuminate."—William F. Buckley Jr., New York Times Book Review

(William F. Buckley Jr. New York Times Book Review )

From the Publisher

12 1.5-hour cassettes --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press (February 1, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0803272480
• ISBN-13: 978-0803272484
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,635,255 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best book on the background of Scott's South Pole expedition, June 3, 1998

By 

Henning Allmers [e-mail] (Bochum, Deutschland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Scott of the Antarctic (Paperback)

Huxley gives the background information on why and how the South Pole expedition of 1910 -1913 became a disaster. The author gives valuable information to understand the history of this endeavor and why Scott was chosen as a leader beginning in the 1880s. She gives an excellent insight on preparations of the expedition and Scott's rivalry with Shackleton. The analysis on why Scott chose ponies and motor sledges as auxillary means of transport over dogs is excellent. The mixture of amateurism and masochism that led to failure shown by the immense feeling of pride to do everything -especially man-hauling the sledges- the hard way has not been explained as well in any other book I have read on the subject. In the foreword the author states that Scott only became a hero because he died and led his four companions into death. After reading the book one can only wonder how muchbecoming a hero might have been a motive that led to self-destruction after having only been second to the Pole after Amundsen's Norwegian expedition.

4.0 out of 5 stars like a Greek tragedy, March 27, 2004

By 

Kristin F. Smith (Timothy's, on the Bayswater Road) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Scott Of The Antarctic (Audio Cassette)

Lasting fame usually requires the death of the hero, as Elspeth Huxley notes in her preface. Had Robert Falcon Scott returned from the south pole, only the historian - and perhaps the scientist - would care about his story. But Scott and four companions died valiantly on the ice. Their courage, fortitude and dignity helped sustain Britain through dark years of war. And they inspire us still. Huxley focuses on Scott's character and how it shaped his motives and decisions. Fortunately, she does not overdo the `psychoanalysis'. She gives detailed accounts of Scott's two expeditions, and reaches sensible conclusions on the major points: his reluctance to use dogs, the complexity of his plans, the reasons for his failure. The latter she ascribes to incipient scurvy, bad weather and bad luck. But one simple, irrefutable fact hangs over all; ponies do not belong in Antarctica ... and Scott's plan centered around pony transport. His last expedition unfolds like a Greek tragedy, complete with warnings from the gods and universal moral lessons. Appropriately, his men inscribed their memorial to their five comrades with the closing line of Tennyson's Ulysses: "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

4.0 out of 5 stars The cold hard facts, May 20, 2001

By 

David L. Baker (Sacramento, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Scott of the Antarctic (Paperback)

A true classic of the genre, "Scott.."chronicles the exploration of the world's last frontier: the great polar ice caps. The reader is emersed in the expedition as the pair of explorers plod endlessly in the tractless permafrost, unaware of the gaping crevaces hidden beneath the snow, but painfully aware of the howling winds that pelt their faces with stinging ice, and numbing cold. This very well written book is indeed a fitting tribute to those intrepid scientists who brave hostile regions to further man's knowledge of the globe.