When I received the script of The Voyage of the Discovery I was amazed. I had only to read a few pages to realise that it was literature, unique of its kind . . . Scott's mind was like wax to receive an impression and like marble to retain it'.
So wrote Leonard Huxley, and he was not alone in his opinion. When this account of Scott's first Antarctic expedition appeared in 1905 the reviewers recognised it as a masterpiece and the first printing sold out immediately. Scott is best known for his doomed last expedition in 1912, but it was this earlier voyage that truly began the opening up of the Antarctic continent and laid the groundwork for the 'Heroic Age' of Antarctic exploration.
The record of that voyage is a classic account by a remarkable explorer who was also one of the most talented writers in the field of polar exploration. Scott brings alive for the reader the brilliance of the aurora in the long winter nights, the hunger and danger of sledging trips, the isolation, and the joy of seeing what no human eye had previously seen.
