Most were printed on coloured paper, but this example, promoting a Theatre Royal, Melville Island, production of Raising the Wind aboard Captain Kellett’s Resolute, is on silk. The lot was sold for £7500 at Sotheby's May 8 Travel sale.
Among those serving on the Resolute were George Nares, Sherard Osborne and George M’Dougall. The latter two men edited the vessel’s journal, The Illustrated Arctic News, and Nares’ copy of the facsimile edition produced by Ackermanns in 1852 was sold at £2400 (exactly the price that Morell paid for the copy in the Züst sale), while a collection of ten ink or watercolour sketches made during the voyage by Nares (9) and M’Dougall, made £2200. An 1857 first of M’Dougall ’s account of the Resolute’s voyage was sold for £1500; Nares’ copy of Sir John Richardson’s 1851 account of his earlier Arctic Searching Expedition for Franklin made £1900 and an 1878 third edition of Nares’ 1875-76 voyage in the Alert and Discovery, inscribed to his
stepmother, made £1400. All of the above mentioned books were in original cloth.
One of six playbills printed in the Arctic in 1851-52
Predating Shackleton’s famous experiments in polar printing by nearly 60 years, this is one of a group of six playbills printed in the Arctic in 1851-52, during the voyages of the Resolute and Intrepid in search of Sir John Franklin.
