Chris Jesty

Chris Jesty (born 1942) is a British author and cartographer who revised Alfred Wainwright's Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells to produce the second edition (2005–2009) of the books, which were originally published in 1955–1966.[1] He used GPS to survey all the routes and the work involved 3,000 hand-drawn changes in the first volume alone, reflecting changes such as walls having fallen down or a quarry being opened on the line of a footpath, and adding information such as car parking.[2]

Jesty had earlier lived in Dolgellau, north Wales, and in the 1970s produced and published a panorama of the view from Snowdon, available as a single sheet or in four sections.[3][4] In 1978 he published a panorama of the view from Scafell Pike with illustrations by Wainwright.[4][5] He then moved to Bridport in Dorset, where he wrote several books about that area before moving to Kendal in Cumbria.

In 1979, he wrote to Wainwright offering to update the guides, but Wainwright replied that he did not want this done in his lifetime. In 1989, Wainwright agree that Jesty could update the guides, but after his death in 1991, when Jesty had worked on the project for 18 months, the guides were sold to Michael Joseph publishers who were not interested in the updates. Some time later the guides were transferred to Frances Lincoln Publishers and the decision was made to produce new editions, not only of the Pictorial Guide but also of several of Wainwright's other walking guides.[1][2] The last two of these were published in April 2014. The publishers have announced that Clive Hutchby is working on the third edition of the Pictorial Guide, with the first volume, The Eastern Fells published in March 2015, followed by The Far Eastern Fells in October 2015.[6]