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Wills, Alfred.
"The Eagle's Nest" in the Valley of Sixt; A Summer Home Among the Alps: Together with some Excursions Among the Great Glaciers.
Publisher: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, London;
Date of Publication: 1860
Stock Code: 6916
FIRST EDITION. Octavo, pp., xviii, [2], 327. 12 superb lithographed plates by the Author’s wife Lucy including View of the Plateau des Fonds and the Eagle’s Nest and2 fold-out maps, as called for. Contemporary black polished half calf by J. Larkins with 5 raised bands, gilt titles and ruling to spine and marbled boards with matching marbled endpapers. Binding clean and bright, and lightly rubbed to lower edge. Small scuffs to endpapers and a little scattered foxing, mainly to prelims and plate edges as usual; one map creased to edge from mis-folding. A handsome copy. Classic autobiographical account of the purchase and construction of The Eagle’s Nest, a mountain retreat and base for mountaineering expeditions in the Sixt Valley, by Judge Alfred Wills (1868-1912), whose other claim to fame was sentencing Oscar Wilde to two years’ hard labour for gross indecency. A mountaineering classic at the start of the Golden Age of Alpinism with vivid descriptions of the landscape and explorations of the area; Wills was President of the Alpine Association and wrote two other works on the subject. £300.00