If you’re obsessed with Antarctica, or if, having read the Herald’s Travel section today as I did, you're feeling inspired to read more, you may wish to pop along to Trevor and Pam Plumbly’s rare book auction next month.

They’ve got the Antarctic well covered, with ‘a significant collection of works on the Antarctic by Scott, Amundsen, Shackleton, Wilkes, Ross, and others.’ Yup, they’ve got The Voyage of Discovery by Captain R. F. Scott in two volumes, published by Smith, Elder and Co in 1905, and The South Pole by Roald Amundsen, also in two volumes, published by John Murray in 1912. Even more rare, Captain Sir James Clark Ross' A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the southern and Antarctic Regions, During the Years 1839 - 43, published in London by John Murray in 1847 (pictured). Crikey.

There are also such delicious bits and pieces as an original 1910 Antarctic postcard and a scrapbook put together by W. H. Trimble, an early Dunedin librarian and author, which contains 153 pages of newspaper cuttings on Antarctic exploration dating from around 1907.

Perhaps our Antarctica artists should nip down and get some background reading before they chuff off in December…

Don’t forget other NZ literature however: Trevor and Pam always have some early editions of Janet Frame and special interest items such as H.K. Dalrymple’s Orchid Hunting in Otago New Zealand (1937) and Fungus Hunting in Otago, New Zealand (1940). Obviously the long autumn evenings used to fly by for H K Dalrymple.

For more information, call 03-477 0574, or email books@trevorplumbly.co.nz.