To the Edge of the World with Tilar J. Mazzeo
Elliott & Thompson has signed To the Edge of the World: A Mutinous Crew, A Perilous Storm and the Woman Who Defied Them All by Tilar J. Mazzeo. Publishing director Sarah Rigby bought UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, from Anna Carmichael at Abner Stein, on behalf of Dystel, Goderich & Bourret. It is out in hardback, audio and ebook in January 2026.
To the Edge of the World tells the true story of a Captain’s wife forced to take the helm in the most perilous seas, beating the odds at the brink of Antarctica to save herself, her husband, and their crew.
‘Summer 1856. Nineteen-year-old Mary Ann Patten and her husband, Joshua, are young and ambitious. Both from New England seafaring families, they have already completed their first voyage around the world with Joshua as captain. Their dream of building a home and a family is coming within reach. It would mean freedom. But the price of that freedom is one last dangerous transit – a
race to deliver supplies to the California Gold Rush.
‘Yet as their ship leaves New York Harbor and sails down the jagged coast of South America, Joshua falls ill, confined to his bunk, delirious. The treacherous first mate is imprisoned in the brig for insubordination. With no obvious option for a new captain, Mary Ann steps into the breach, forced to take the helm from her husband. Within days she has put down a mutiny and must now attempt to steer this 216’ clipper ship laden with the modern equivalent of $11 million dollars of cargo through Drake’s Passage and around Cape Horn – the most treacherous waters in the world.
‘Soon caught in an 18-day gale, Mary Ann makes the only choice she can to save the ship and her crew – and her and Joshua’s future. She turns the ship to run it out of the storm, moving straight towards the wilds of Antarctica and the unknown. To the Edge of the World is the story of one woman who, when faced with impossible odds, would do all that was necessary to survive.’
Mazzeo undertook an expedition of her own to Cape Horn and Antarctica in 2022 to retrace Mary Ann’s footsteps. In the book she draws on her own first-hand experiences, along with new archival research into nineteenth-century women’s maritime writing. She said: “This is the story of how sometimes average people, faced with only bad choices, can do the impossible. On the one hand, it’s the simple story of a woman who fights to save her husband and their dream of a family with all the ferocity of love. At the same time, it’s an epic maritime adventure. Mary Ann achieved a feat of seamanship and leadership that remains legendary among mariners. Compared in her own time to Florence Nightingale and George Washington, celebrated for a brief moment in the international press as a heroine, lauded by the suffragettes as a case for women’s franchise a generation later, Mary Ann’s story then slipped into the shadows of history. This book is an effort to return her, for a brief moment, to the spotlight.”
Rigby said: “Thrilling, harrowing and heroic, To the Edge of the World is the unique story of one woman who – when the storm hit – undertook extraordinary feats of skill and endurance to survive. Tilar Mazzeo has an exceptional track record when it comes to reviving absorbing stories of courage and adventure that would otherwise be lost to us.”
ABOUT TILAR J MAZZEO
Tilar J Mazzeo is the New York Times bestselling author of more than half a dozen award-winning non-fiction cultural histories, including Widow Cliquot, now a major Hollywood film. She also writes on food and wine for the mainstream press.