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THE ARCTIC COLLECTION OF RAY EDINGER
LOTS 40-79
After growing up on Long Island, I studied at the Rochester Institute of
Technology where I earned my bachelors degree. Following graduation, I spent
the next thirty-six years as a scientist in the field of photographic and imaging
science with the Eastman Kodak Company.
I have always had a morbid curiosity about adventures in cold, icy regions – the more
tragic, the better. As a young boy sixty years ago, I remember reading Maurice
Herzog’s tale of his disastrous experience climbing Mount Annapurna. Lying on
the living room floor, warm and dry, I was mesmerized by the pictures and
narrative. There he was, his gloves skittering down the mountainside, forever lost
to him, and his horribly frostbitten hands, their frozen flesh hanging in shreds!
Over the years Herzog became just a dim memory. Then one wintry afternoon
Ivisited my local library in search of a book about the Arctic. It had to be
something special, I told the librarian. She returned from the stacks with a
musty, stained, and frayed two-volume set, its loosened leather covers held in
place by neatly tied satin ribbons: Elisha Kent Kane’s
Arctic Explorations
. As I
read the wonderful narrative I began to dream of having my very own copy, and
I knew it just had to be an edition that was published while the long-forgotten
explorer was still alive.
Over the next thirty years I learned much about book collecting as one Arctic
book inexorably lead to another, and this succession of purchases in the polar
genre continued to define my collection. My interest ultimately expanded to
speaking engagements and authorship, with articles published in
Mercator’s
World, Western New York Heritage, Biblio,
and
Journal of the Fellowship of
American Bibliophilic Societies,
plus having written two non-fiction, Arctic-themed
books,
Fury Beach
(Berkley, 2003) and
Love and Ice
(Frederic C. Beil, 2015).
Now that I am fully retired, my Arctic mania has mellowed and the time has
come to disperse my collection. My new passion is travel. My wife Yvonne and I
have already visited more than fifty countries around the globe. Perhaps not
surprisingly, my library shelves are beginning to groan under the weight of
antiquarian travel books.
—
Ray Edinger