Mountaineering Literature

Long established as a standard reference work worldwide, this is a thorough bibliography of all mountaineering books that are of practical use to climbers or for reading pleasure or historical interest. Documenting more than 2000 books of mountaineering literature, it also includes nearly 900 climber's guidebooks, a sampling of more than 400 works of mountaineering fiction, plus journals and bibliographies.

Here is a list. It contains 100 climbing and mountaineering books. Some are brilliant; some are not. Some have won awards; some of them should have. Some of them are only a year or two old; some were written over 100 years ago. One of these books might make your top five; one of them might be the worst climbing book you've ever read – if you even finished it. Most of the big names are here – Harrer, Simpson, McDonald, Roberts, Krakauer, Bonatti, Kirkpatrick, Moffat (and Moffatt) – and some not-so-big names. Have a read, see what you think. And remember: it's just a list.

Recipient of the Banff Mountain Book Festival's Canadian Rockies Award A book to be read and digested, then sampled, then read and dipped into often...a fine achievement for this dedicated author... Bruce Fairley, Canadian Alpine Journal HOLY SHIT WAAAAAAAAAT A FABBBBBULOUS TOME. Tami Knight, Illustrator/Mountaineer This important new book tells the story of Canada's 200-year mountaineering history. Through the use of stories and pictures, Chic Scott documents the evolution of climbing in Canada. He introduces us to the early mountain pioneers and the modern day climbing athletes; he takes us to the crags and the gyms, from the west coast to Quebec, and from the Yukon to the Rockies. But most importantly, Scott showcases Canadian climbers--the routes that challenged them, the peaks that inspired them, their insatiable desire to climber harder, to push the limits. Begin the trek through Canada's climbing history... Learn about Swiss guides hired by CPR hotels who ushered in the glory years of first ascents. Continue through to the turn of the twentieth century when British and American climbers of leisure found themselves hampered by the difficulties of travel through the Canadian wilderness. Learn about the European immigrants of the 1950s who pushed the limits on the rock walls, and the American superstars who led the search for frightening new routes on the big north faces. Be there when British expatriates pioneer an exciting new trend in world mountaineering--waterfall ice climbing. Witness the popular growth of sport climbing, both on the crags and in the gyms. Finally, enjoy the story of home-grown climbers. Initially slow to take up the challenge, both at home and overseas, they are now leaders in the climbing world.

For this mountaineering eBook collection from Vertebrate Publishing, we've picked extracts from eleven of our favourite mountaineering and exploration titles. Including works from Reinhold Messner, Edwin Drummond and Joe Tasker, these award-winning titles trace the history of mountains from the 1920s to the present day. From the tense and thrilling to the evocative and stirring, they record some of the most exciting events in climbing. Legendary explorer H.W. Tilman cycles across Africa in Snow on the Equator. Kurt Diemberger offers a harrowing first-hand account of the 1996 K2 tragedy in The Endless Knot, and Doug Scott and Alex MacIntyre reveal exactly what goes on during climbing expeditions in their Boardman Tasker winning Shishapangma. You can find out more about the books featured, and others, on our website: www.v-publishing.co.uk. This mountaineering eBook sampler features extracts from: Mountaineering Holiday by Frank Smythe Snow on the Equator by H.W. Tilman Conquistadors of the Useless by Lionel Terray Savage Arena by Joe Tasker Shishapangma by Doug Scott and Alex MacIntyre On Thin Ice by Mick Fowler Elusive Summits by Victor Saunders The Endless Knot by Kurt Diemberger Everest: Expedition to the Ultimate by Reinhold Messner A Dream of White Horses by Edwin Drummond My Life by Anderl Heckmair

This book reflects, comments on and adds to a fast growing field of travel writing studies. The twenty-five papers in this volume rely on a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches and explore a diverse body of travel writing texts created over the last three hundred years in English, Polish, Hungarian and French. The book is divided into three parts. The first one includes papers which apply the findings of post-structuralism, generic and cultural criticism as well as narratology to explore theories, canons and genres in travel writing drawing material not only from non-fictional and fictional prose narratives but also from poetry and tragedy. The second and third parts contain papers on a wide selection of travel writing texts, both fictional and non-fictional, written in Anglophone, as well as other literary traditions. They are arranged chronologically: the second part is devoted to texts written in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, while the third part focuses on those written in the twentieth and twenty first centuries.

This book examines the relationship between Romantic-period writing and the activity that Samuel Taylor Coleridge christened 'mountaineering' in 1802. It argues that mountaineering developed as a pursuit in Britain during the Romantic era, earlier than is generally recognised, and shows how writers including William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Ann Radcliffe, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, and Walter Scott were central to the activity's evolution. It explores how the desire for physical ascent shaped Romantic-period literary culture and investigates how the figure of the mountaineer became crucial to creative identities and literary outputs. Illustrated with 25 images from the period, the book shows how mountaineering in Britain had its origins in scientific research, antiquarian travel, and the search for the picturesque and the sublime. It considers how writers engaged with mountaineering's power dynamics and investigates issues including the politics of the summit view (what Wordsworth terms 'visual sovereignty'), the relationships between different types of 'mountaineers', and the role of women in the developing cultures of ascent. Placing the work of canonical writers alongside a wide range of other types of mountaineering literature, this book reassesses key Romantic-period terms and ideas, such as vision, insight, elevation, revelation, transcendence, and the sublime. It opens up new ways of understanding the relationship between Romantic-period writers and the world that they experienced through their feet and hands, as well as their eyes, as they moved through the challenging landscapes of the British mountains.

This book is about the rise of a new ethos in British mountaineering during the late nineteenth century. It traces how British attitudes to mountains were transformed by developments both within the new sport of mountaineering and in the wider fin-de-siècle culture. The emergence of the new genre of mountaineering literature, which helped to create a self-conscious community of climbers with broadly shared values, coincided with a range of cultural and scientific trends that also influenced the direction of mountaineering. The author discusses the growing preoccupation with the physical basis of aesthetic sensations, and with physicality and materiality in general; the new interest in the physiology of effort and fatigue; and the characteristically Victorian drive to enumerate, codify, and classify. Examining a wide range of texts, from memoirs and climbing club journals to hotel visitors’ books, he argues that the figure known as the ‘New Mountaineer’ was seen to embody a distinctly modern approach to mountain climbing and mountain aesthetics.