Mummery (Albert Frederick). My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus. London, T. Fisher Unwin & New York, Chas. Scribner's Sons, 1895. In-4°, full cloth binding, title and publisher's labels on spine (publisher's boards). Rare first edition of this fundamental work on mountaineering, illustrated with 11 plates hors-texte in photogravure, including 2 in colour, and 21 drawings in the text after T. Pennel, Miss Bristow, Mr. Holmes and V. Sella. It contains the account of the first ascent of the Grépon (the "last great problem" of the Mont Blanc massif in the early 1880s), the first route of difficult itineraries on the greatest peaks of the Alps (the book begins with the account of the first ascent of the Zmutt ridge on the Matterhorn), the beginning of great mountaineering without a guide (first ascent of the Dent du Requin), the beginnings of difficult female mountaineering with Miss Bristow on the Grépon and Mrs Mummery on the first ascent of the arête du Diable on the Taeschhorn (she wrote this account, which is one of the most fascinating)... The book ends with a chapter on the pleasures and penalties of mountaineering: "The great climbs, it is true, sometimes demand their sacrifice, but the true mountaineer will not give up his passion even if he knows he is the designated victim. " A few months after writing these lines, Mummery died on Nanga Parbat, a victim of his passion. Handwritten bookplate in pencil on the flyleaf, dated May 1895. Peter Obergfell's bookplate pasted on the flyleaf. Scattered foxing. Albert Frederick Mummery (Dover 1855 - Nanga Parbat 1895) was undoubtedly the greatest British mountaineer of the late nineteenth century. He opened up a considerable number of routes of great difficulty in the Alps, thus initiating the era of acrobatic climbing: his most famous conquest was the ascent of the Grépon, with the guides A. Burgener and B. Venetz in 1881, an ascent he repeated twice without a guide, in 1892 and 1893 (the second time in the company of Miss Bristow). Most often with Alexandre Burgener, he made the first ascents of the Grands Charmoz, the Diable ridge on the Täschhorn, the Zmutt ridge on the Matterhorn, the Y couloir on the Aiguille Verte, the Dent du Requin and the north-west ridge of the Aiguille du Plan (the last two without a guide). The Alps were no longer enough to satisfy his appetite for conquest. In 1888, he made the first ascent of Dych Tau (5,198 m) in the Caucasus. He disappeared in 1895 during an attempt to climb Nanga Parbat, an expedition that was exceptionally daring for its time. Perret, 3149 - Regards sur les Alpes 97 - Neate - ACL