A copy of David Copperfield that Captain Scott’s men read aloud every night while they were trapped in an Antarctic ice cave forms part of a new exhibition revealing the international side of the quintessentially English author Charles Dickens.

Stained with black fingerprints from the seal blubber lamps that were used to light the ice cave, the 1910 edition of the Dickens novel still bears a faint whiff of smoke and fish. It was one of three books that a group of Scott’s men used for entertainment while they were stranded in the ice cave for seven months; they read aloud a chapter a night for 60 nights to keep up morale. Geologist Raymond E Priestley, who was part of the group, wrote of how “we were very sorry to part with” David when the story came to an end.

They looked forward to reading it every night. A doctor prescribed them two chapters a night when they were feeling particularly sad Frankie Kubicki, curator

“They had to bury themselves in the cave to survive and were eating penguins and seals to keep going. It was a very harsh winter. It was so important to have the stories not only as entertainment but also as comfort and a way of keeping up morale between the men as well,” said Frankie Kubicki, curator at the Charles Dickens Museum in London, which will launch the exhibition Global Dickens: For Every Nation Upon Earth on 14 May.

“They looked forward to reading it every night. A doctor prescribed them two chapters a night when they were feeling particularly sad,” she added. “The format they were reading in was exactly the way it should be read – aloud and in a periodic way.”

Dr Claire Warrior, a trustee of the museum, said the copy of David Copperfield from the 1910 Terra Nova expedition was part of a long tradition of British expeditions taking libraries of books to the polar regions. “Sir John Franklin’s 1845 expedition took over 1,000 books north, from past explorers’ accounts to prayer books, with, we think, The Pickwick Papers and Nicholas Nickleby included, too,” she said. “Reading was an important communal activity which staved off boredom and built bonds between men living in challenging, cramped conditions with little personal space; Antarctica is rarely a place of solitude. Also, the fact that David Copperfield was originally published in instalments meant that it’s packed with cliff-hangers, which would have helped to keep interest high.”

Scott and his group reached the South Pole but failed to make it back to camp; the group in the cave survived the expedition, but never reached the South Pole. They brought the novel back to New Zealand with them, from where it made its way, eventually, to the Charles Dickens Museum in London, where it is a star attraction in the forthcoming exhibition.

Portable writing desk made of rose wood with inlay of mother of pearl. Owned by Charles Dickens, c. 1860 Photograph: Charles Dickens Museum, London

The museum is housed in the Bloomsbury townhouse where Dickens moved in 1837 with his young family, and where he wrote Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, completed The Pickwick Papers and began Barnaby Rudge. Intended to reveal how Dickens and his stories travelled around the world, the exhibition will also feature the portable rosewood writing desk used by Dickens on his later travels – containing two ink bottles and some pens – as well as the travelling bag he took to Italy when he climbed Vesuvius, and letters written by the author in French and Italian. While the author is seen as quintessentially British, he himself felt that he wrote “for every nation upon Earth”, and travelled widely in Europe and toured the US twice.

“While the thought of Charles Dickens may bring to mind images that are firmly rooted in London and England, his sights were set on the world. Dickens was as much a travel writer and journalist as he was a writer of fiction, and the subjects and social issues that preoccupied him were universal,” said Kubicki.

Dickens was also keen to use travel to reinvigorate his muse, writing in a November 1843 letter that “I should unquestionably fade away from the public eye for a year, and enlarge my stock of description and observation by seeing countries new to me; which it is most necessary to me that I should see, and which with an increasing family I can scarcely hope to see at all, unless I see them now”.

“As the UK re-evaluates its relationship with Europe and its place in the world, we are celebrating the vital connection that Dickens had – and has – around the globe,” said the museum’s director Cindy Sughrue. “Dickens knew the immense value of seeing ourselves from the outside, and of gaining inspiration and friendships along the way. Then, as now, our lives are richer for those experiences.”