Edited by Peter Gillman

Everest

£225

Introduced By Wade Davis

Compiled, written and edited by Peter Gillman for The Folio Society, Everest: From Reconnaissance to Summit is an exclusive record of five key expeditions, introduced by Wade Davis and Jan Morris with superlative photography from the Royal Geographical Society archives.

Everest

£225

Book Details

Presentation Box & BindingBound in printed and blocked cloth
Pictorial slipcase
Silver tops

Dimensions9¼ inches x 10¾ inches

FontSet in Walbaum with Mallory as display

PagesVolume 1: 536 pages plus 2 fold-out panoramas (one 6 page, one 4 page); Volume 2: 208 pages

AuthorEdited by Peter Gillman

Illustration268 colour and black & white photographs in volume 1, and 2 maps in volume 2

Publication Date12/05/2021

PrintingProduced in collaboration with the Royal Geographical Society

Editor's Notes

Commissioned exclusively for The Folio Society, Everest is the ultimate account of five key expeditions to the summit of the world, using spectacular photography and reportage from the men who went there. Marking the 100th anniversary of the earliest British reconnaissance in 1921, it also covers the first attempt on the summit in 1922 and the tragic 1924 expedition that claimed the lives of Mallory and Irvine. It shows how the mountain proved unconquerable by a new generation of climbers in 1933, before the triumphant ascent of Hillary and Tenzing in 1953.

The words and pictures in this two-volume edition were selected by the award-winning mountaineering writer Peter Gillman. The first volume, A Photographic History, collects 268 of the most remarkable mountain photographs ever taken, including breathtaking panoramas, steep gorges, glaciers, ice-fields, pinnacles and close-ups of the ascents. The men’s testimony makes up the second volume, An Eyewitness History, in articles and dispatches, memoirs, official reports and private letters, each accompanied by a commentary by Gillman. Everest is introduced by Wade Davis – an authority on the early expeditions, who puts them in their historical context of the ‘Great Game’ played out between the British and Russian empires and, in the next century, the First World War. The preface is from Jan Morris, last surviving member of the 1953 expedition until her death in 2020.

About the photography

The Greatest Mountain Photography

Peter Gillman is one of the world’s foremost authorities on the race to conquer Everest. His selection of photography from the Royal Geographical Society archives is a masterpiece of visual storytelling, further enriched by his detailed captions. The images are of amazing aesthetic and technical quality, thanks to the presence on the expeditions of skilled photographers such as John Noel, George Lowe and George Mallory. As well as capturing the sublime beauty of the mountainscapes and the skill and endurance of the climbers, they are pioneering works in the history of photography: the 1921 expedition supplied the very first recorded images of Everest and the Tibetan people. Some pictures have seldom been seen, while others, such as Edmund Hillary’s shot of Tenzing Norgay at the summit, rank alongside the most famous news photography of the 20th century. They include new digital scans from the fragile silver-nitrate negatives held at the RGS, providing a sharpness never before possible.

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About the photography

The Greatest Mountain Photography

Peter Gillman is one of the world’s foremost authorities on the race to conquer Everest. His selection of photography from the Royal Geographical Society archives is a masterpiece of visual storytelling, further enriched by his detailed captions. The images are of amazing aesthetic and technical quality, thanks to the presence on the expeditions of skilled photographers such as John Noel, George Lowe and George Mallory. As well as capturing the sublime beauty of the mountainscapes and the skill and endurance of the climbers, they are pioneering works in the history of photography: the 1921 expedition supplied the very first recorded images of Everest and the Tibetan people. Some pictures have seldom been seen, while others, such as Edmund Hillary’s shot of Tenzing Norgay at the summit, rank alongside the most famous news photography of the 20th century. They include new digital scans from the fragile silver-nitrate negatives held at the RGS, providing a sharpness never before possible.

2 of 6

About the photography

The Greatest Mountain Photography

Peter Gillman is one of the world’s foremost authorities on the race to conquer Everest. His selection of photography from the Royal Geographical Society archives is a masterpiece of visual storytelling, further enriched by his detailed captions. The images are of amazing aesthetic and technical quality, thanks to the presence on the expeditions of skilled photographers such as John Noel, George Lowe and George Mallory. As well as capturing the sublime beauty of the mountainscapes and the skill and endurance of the climbers, they are pioneering works in the history of photography: the 1921 expedition supplied the very first recorded images of Everest and the Tibetan people. Some pictures have seldom been seen, while others, such as Edmund Hillary’s shot of Tenzing Norgay at the summit, rank alongside the most famous news photography of the 20th century. They include new digital scans from the fragile silver-nitrate negatives held at the RGS, providing a sharpness never before possible.

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About the photography

The Greatest Mountain Photography

Peter Gillman is one of the world’s foremost authorities on the race to conquer Everest. His selection of photography from the Royal Geographical Society archives is a masterpiece of visual storytelling, further enriched by his detailed captions. The images are of amazing aesthetic and technical quality, thanks to the presence on the expeditions of skilled photographers such as John Noel, George Lowe and George Mallory. As well as capturing the sublime beauty of the mountainscapes and the skill and endurance of the climbers, they are pioneering works in the history of photography: the 1921 expedition supplied the very first recorded images of Everest and the Tibetan people. Some pictures have seldom been seen, while others, such as Edmund Hillary’s shot of Tenzing Norgay at the summit, rank alongside the most famous news photography of the 20th century. They include new digital scans from the fragile silver-nitrate negatives held at the RGS, providing a sharpness never before possible.

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About the photography

The Greatest Mountain Photography

Peter Gillman is one of the world’s foremost authorities on the race to conquer Everest. His selection of photography from the Royal Geographical Society archives is a masterpiece of visual storytelling, further enriched by his detailed captions. The images are of amazing aesthetic and technical quality, thanks to the presence on the expeditions of skilled photographers such as John Noel, George Lowe and George Mallory. As well as capturing the sublime beauty of the mountainscapes and the skill and endurance of the climbers, they are pioneering works in the history of photography: the 1921 expedition supplied the very first recorded images of Everest and the Tibetan people. Some pictures have seldom been seen, while others, such as Edmund Hillary’s shot of Tenzing Norgay at the summit, rank alongside the most famous news photography of the 20th century. They include new digital scans from the fragile silver-nitrate negatives held at the RGS, providing a sharpness never before possible.

5 of 6

About the photography

The Greatest Mountain Photography

Peter Gillman is one of the world’s foremost authorities on the race to conquer Everest. His selection of photography from the Royal Geographical Society archives is a masterpiece of visual storytelling, further enriched by his detailed captions. The images are of amazing aesthetic and technical quality, thanks to the presence on the expeditions of skilled photographers such as John Noel, George Lowe and George Mallory. As well as capturing the sublime beauty of the mountainscapes and the skill and endurance of the climbers, they are pioneering works in the history of photography: the 1921 expedition supplied the very first recorded images of Everest and the Tibetan people. Some pictures have seldom been seen, while others, such as Edmund Hillary’s shot of Tenzing Norgay at the summit, rank alongside the most famous news photography of the 20th century. They include new digital scans from the fragile silver-nitrate negatives held at the RGS, providing a sharpness never before possible.

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Peter Gillman is one of Britain’s leading mountaineering writers. His biography of Everest pioneer George Mallory, The Wildest Dream, won the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountaineering Literature in 2000. Extreme Eiger, his account of a dramatic ascent of the North Face of the Eiger in 1966, won the British Outdoor Writers and Photographers Guild book of the year in 2015. Both books were co-authored with Peter’s wife, Leni. He has won a total of seven annual OWPG awards, several jointly with Leni. Gillman has travelled widely, from the Himalayas to Patagonia, and has written extensively on mountaineering for the specialist and national press, particularly the Sunday Times. He met and interviewed two of the key figures in the Everest expeditions of the 1920s: photographer John Noel and geologist Noel Odell, the last person to see George Mallory and Sandy Irvine before they disappeared near the summit of Everest in 1924. He has been a keen climber and mountain walker throughout his life and is a member of the British Alpine Club.

Wade Davis is an award-winning writer, anthropologist and explorer whose work has taken him from the Amazon to Tibet, Polynesia to the Arctic. His many books include The Serpent and the Rainbow (1985), One River: Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon Rainforest (1996), Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest (2011), which won Britain's Samuel Johnson Prize and Magdalena: River of Dreams (2020). He is currently Professor of Anthropology and the BC Leadership Chair in Cultures and Ecosystems at Risk at the University of British Columbia.