SHACKLETON, Ernest. – Samuel SMILES. Self-Help, with Illustrations of Conduct and Perseverance. London: John Murray, 1908. Inscribed by Ernest Shackleton to the initial blank, 8vo (184 x 121mm.) Photographic portrait of David Livingstone as frontispiece, portrait plates also of Horatio Nelson, Brunel, and others. (Toning, some spotting to preliminaries.) Contemporary blue full calf, red morocco lettering piece to spine, gilt insignia of Brockley Secondary School to upper cover (extremities rubbed). Note: when the Shackleton family moved from Ireland to South London in 1884, Ernest was ten years old. In 1885 he attended Fir Lodge Preparatory School in Sydenham, and then Dulwich College. The County Secondary School Brockley is not far from Fir Lodge, so it would likely have been a school known to the Shackleton family. Following the return of the British Antarctic Expedition in 1909 and the lecture tour that Shackleton undertook around the world, a visit to the local schools in South-East London might have felt like returning home.