A Handbook of Siberia and Arctic Russia.

First Edition. Distinctly uncommon, COPAC has Glasgow and LSE only, OCLC has 30 listings for a 1920 re-issue of Vol. I - “Vols. 2 and 3 never published?” - but adds just three full sets, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Syracuse and Miami Universities. Designated “Confidential”, this handbook, produced in response to the Intelligence needs of British forces sent out as part of the Anglo-American Intervention in Russia, is a typically well-compiled affair providing historical, ethnographical, climatological, zoological and above all topographical information on the region. Volumes I & III have the minuscule inked ownership inscriptions of Nicholas Polunin, renowned Arctic Botanist and campaigning environmentalist, founder and Editor in Chief of Environmental Conservation.

Three volumes, 8vo. Large folding coloured map in end-pocket to Volume I, three similar, on four sheets, in end-pocket to Volume II, together with eight folding maps and town-plans bound into the text, Volume III with large folding end-pocket map, folding coloured map of routes bound in at the rear and three town-plans, one of them, folding. Endpapers a little browned, but overall a very good set indeed in the original blue cloth, gilt, a little rubbed at the extremities, lower board of Volume III slightly marked.