George Mallory is renowned for being one of the first British mountaineers to attempt to scale the dizzying heights of Mount Everest during the 1920s — until the mountain claimed his life. Nearly a century later, newly digitized letters shed light on Mallory’s hopes and fears about ascending Everest, leading up to the last days before he disappeared while heading for its peak. On June 8, 1924, Mallory and fellow climber Andrew Irvine departed from their expedition team in a push for the summit; they were never seen alive again. Mallory’s words, however, are now available to read online in their entirety for the first time. Magdalene College, Cambridge, where Mallory studied as an undergraduate from 1905 to 1908, recently digitized hundreds of pages of correspondence and other documents written and received by him. Over the past 18 months, archivists scanned the documents in preparation for the centennial of Mallory’s…
