D. M Wilson, D. B Elder

Cheltenham in Antartica (eBook, ePUB)

The Life Of Edward Wilson

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

Edward Adrian Wilson is perhaps the most famous native son of Cheltenham. In

the early years of the 20th Century, he was one of the major influences and

personalities of the heroic age of Antarctic exploration and has also been

recognised as one of the top ranking ornithologists and naturalists in the United

Kingdom during this period. He was also one of the last great scientific expedition

artists.

Despite this, remarkably little has been published about him. His father wrote an

unpublished biography of him shortly after his death. This was an important

source for George Seaver, who published three volumes of biography on Edward

Wilson in the 1930s and 40s, fortunately quoting extensively from his letters and

diaries. After the appearance of the first two volumes much of the source material

that Seaver had used was destroyed, most of it on the instructions of Oriana,

Edward Wilson's widow. There was nothing malicious in this: she simply thought

that she had done her public duty in allowing a biography to be published and did

not want strangers digging around in her private correspondence after her death.

In the 1960s and 70s, through the Scott Polar Research Institute, the Antarctic

expedition diaries of Edward Wilson and a volume of his Antarctic bird pictures

were published. Several people tried to write new biographies in the 1970s and

80s but all failed for the lack of new material: due to the subsequent events,

George Seaver's books and the published diaries already contained much of the

source material about the life of Edward Wilson.

As such this volume draws heavily on the work of Edward Wilson's father, on the

published diaries, and on George Seaver. With Seaver in particular, however, his

use of the historical sources available to him requires a word of caution: he

frequently used the narrative technique of rolling quotations from several letters or

diary entries into one quotation, passing them off as a single quotation from a

single document. Since he published no footnotes it is almost impossible to

establish where he has or has not done this, although his longer quotations, or

quotations from complete letters, tend to be accurate. Unlike some commentators

in subsequent generations, who often use quotation techniques to alter historical

facts and to mis-represent what was said, with Seaver it is generally benign - he

has not, as far as we have discovered, changed the sense of meaning, or misrepresented

facts external to the actual form of the quotation. It is, however,

something of a disaster from the point of view of accurate scholarship given that

the original manuscripts are often no longer available. We have done our best,

where possible, to find the original sources but these are very scattered, where

they still exist, and it is painstaking work. Occasionally, they can be recreated

through bringing together copied extracts - fortunately a habit in which many of

the Wilson family indulged - such as in Edward Wilson's last letter to Oriana,

reproduced towards the end of this book.

In many ways, therefore, the following text should not be seen as a major new

biography of Edward Wilson but rather as a complement to the volumes of

George Seaver. This is not to say that there is no new material in the book, there

should be enough to interest polar scholars, though there may not be as much as

they had hoped. Where possible, we have also chosen to use previously

unpublished illustrations from the vast collections of Edward Wilson's pictures.

These, alone, should be enough to interest those in search of new material. Our

aim, however, is to meet the many hundreds of enquiries received about this

famous son of Cheltenham and his life. Edward Wilson is one of the most asked

after aspects of the collections at the Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museums. This

work is intended to answer this demand from the public for something about

Edward Wilson to be available to them in print, and to identify the 'Wilson sites' in

and around Cheltenham, rather than to write an academic book. As such there are

no footnotes but an annotated copy of the text will be placed in the collections of

the Scott Polar Research Institute, the Cheltenham Public Library and the

Cheltenham Museum, so that those who may be interested in the historical

sources for this work will be able to find them.

Finally, it seems impossible not to say a few words about the contemporary

situation as regards polar historical scholarship and biography, against which this

book will inevitably be judged by some. We hope that this work is an exception to

the current fashion for cynicism. Some will doubtless find it an "old fashioned" or

"non-critical" work as a result. For this we make no apology. Our aim isn't to pick

for faults like vultures at a carcass, nor to sit in judgement, but to help you to get to

know a remarkably complex man a little better - and maybe - just maybe - you

will find a little inspiration for your own life and times through the life and times of

Edward Adrian Wilson.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Reardon Publishing
• Seitenzahl: 198
• Erscheinungstermin: 13. September 2019
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781874192701
• Artikelnr.: 38364639

Autorenporträt

DR. DAVID M. WILSON With over ten years experience working on Expedition cruise ships, Dr David Wilson is in increasing demand both as an ornithological field guide and as an historian. He boasts numerous explorers and ornithologists on his family tree, which add a uniquely personal flavour to many of his talks. Not least amongst these was his great uncle, Dr Edward Wilson, who was on both of Captain Scott's Antarctic Expeditions and famously died with him on the return from the South Pole in 1912. With his wide range of philosophical, artistic and biological interests, time spent talking with Dr. Wilson is not likely to be dull. He is the author of numerous books, papers and even a CD of historic Antarctic expedition songs and poems. His latest books, to be published in the autumn of 2011 will be a volume of Captain Scott's own long lost photographs; and a volume of his great uncle's Antarctic paintings. Dr. David M. Wilson, PhD. (Essex), was born in 1963. Having an early career in the theatre, he moved on to study at the United World College of the Pacific and the Universities of York and Essex, where he trained as a philosopher. He is also a trained Counsellor. With a strong interest in Aboriginal cultures, he also has a wide range of ornithological and natural history interests. He is a noted polar historian with a personal connection to his subject: his great uncle, Dr Edward Wilson, died with Captain Scott and his party on their return from the South Pole in 1912. In addition to writing The Lost Photographs of Captain Scott (2011), he has produced several books in support of our polar heritage: Cheltenham in Antarctica: the Life of Edward Wilson (2000); Discovery Illustrated: Pictures from Captain Scott's First Antarctic Expedition, (2001) The Songs of the 'Morning': a musical sketch, (cd 2002) Edward Wilson's Nature Notebooks (2004) Nimrod Illustrated: Pictures from Lieutenant Shackleton's British Antarctic Expedition (2009) Edward Wilson's Antarctic Notebooks (2011)