# Is "The Worst Journey in the World" by Apsley Cherry-Garrard a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard (Constable & Company Ltd, 1922) is identified by: Constable & Co., London, 1922, in two octavo volumes, full title "The Worst Journey in the World: Antarctic 1910-1913." The binding is the point that matters. UK true first: Constable, London, 1922, the polar high spot and the edition to collect.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- Constable & Co., London, 1922, in two octavo volumes, full title "The Worst Journey in the World: Antarctic 1910-1913." The binding is the point that matters
- The rare first issue is in half white cloth (buckram) over grey / blue-grey paper-covered boards with a printed spine label: Cherry-Garrard insisted on the white "Polar" half-binding because he wanted the book to look as handsome and as polar as possible, relatively few copies of the first edition were actually bound up that way, it soiled almost immediately with normal handling, and the book was quickly reissued in plain durable blue cloth, which is the state usually encountered on the market
- Collation must be complete: approximately sixty plates across the two volumes, six of them in colour and ten of them folding panoramas, plus five maps of which four fold
- Missing panoramas and folding maps are the commonest defect, and a rebound or recased copy destroys the binding evidence on which the issue turns
- Publisher imprint reads Constable & Company Ltd
- Not a book-club edition (see below)

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Apsley Cherry-Garrard |
| Publisher | Constable & Company Ltd |
| Year | 1922 |
| True first | UK edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | Constable & Co., London, 1922, in two octavo volumes, full title "The Worst Journey in the World: Antarctic 1910-1913." The binding is the… |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
Constable & Co., London, 1922, in two octavo volumes, full title "The Worst Journey in the World: Antarctic 1910-1913." The binding is the point that matters. The rare first issue is in half white cloth (buckram) over grey / blue-grey paper-covered boards with a printed spine label: Cherry-Garrard insisted on the white "Polar" half-binding because he wanted the book to look as handsome and as polar as possible, relatively few copies of the first edition were actually bound up that way, it soiled almost immediately with normal handling, and the book was quickly reissued in plain durable blue cloth, which is the state usually encountered on the market. Collation must be complete: approximately sixty plates across the two volumes, six of them in colour and ten of them folding panoramas, plus five maps of which four fold. Missing panoramas and folding maps are the commonest defect, and a rebound or recased copy destroys the binding evidence on which the issue turns.

## Is this the true first?
UK true first: Constable, London, 1922, the polar high spot and the edition to collect. The first American edition, George H. Doran Company, New York, 1922, appeared in the same year and was printed in the UK from the same sheets, issued in two volumes in linen-spined grey papered boards with a spine label; critically, the Doran issue was published WITHOUT the ten panoramic plates, which is both the practical UK/US test and the reason the Constable issue is preferred. Both are catalogued targets, but precedence rests unambiguously with Constable.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club issue is documented for the 1922 Constable or Doran issues in the sources consulted. The reprint field is deep (Penguin Classics, Vintage/Random House, Carroll & Graf, the Folio Society and various later Constable printings) and none is a first. The live trap is subtler than date: blue-cloth copies are frequently offered simply as "first edition," which is accurate as to edition but describes the later binding issue. The discrimination that counts is white half-binding versus blue cloth, not 1922 versus later.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Worst Journey in the World* by Apsley Cherry-Garrard a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-worst-journey-in-the-world
CC BY 4.0. Part of the Canonical First-Edition Points of Issue dataset (https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/api/first-edition-titles.json). Last reviewed 2026-07-04.