The Ambitions of Jane Franklin, Victorian Lady Adventurer.

Alexander, Alison. (Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2013).
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

A fairly balanced account of Lady Jane, with heavy emphasis on her role in Van Dieman’s Land where she clearly manipulated her husband’s performance as Governor General while always denying any involvement in the politics of the island. It comes across as an indictment of an ineffectual and easily swayed Sir John and a controlling Lady Jane. Alexander dwells somewhat on Franklin’s prim Protestantism, Sabbatarianism, and Scriptural grounding while Jane comes across as much less concerned about such matters. Disappointingly little about the James Clark Ross visit to Hobart, or about Franklin’s interactions with some North American political convicts.

Deadly Winter: The Life of Sir John Franklin.

Beardsley, Martyn. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2002.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

A facile and not very original biography of Franklin, sloppily edited and proofread, but a decent enough overview.

A Voyage to the North Pole, by Benjamin Bragg, Accompanied by his Friend, Captain Slapperwhack; with an Account of the Dangers and Accidents They Experienced in the Frozen Seas of the Polar Circle. Also, the Manner of their Wintering on the Island of Spitzberg, and Discovery of the Polar Continent.

Bragg, Benjamin, pseud. (London: Published by G. Walker, Great Portland-Street, 1817).
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

An imaginary voyage posing as a piece of juvenile literature, though on a sophisticated level with remarkable insights into the Arctic at such an early date. Apart from land in the North Pole region, it gets many of the details right and one wonders whether Mary Shelley could have read it. I’ve not detected who the author was, though there was a bookseller of the time named Benjamin Bragg.

Marginalia: Volumes I, II, III, IV, V.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Bollingen edition LXXV. Edited by H.J. Jackson and J.R. de J. Jackson. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1995).
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

Coleridge’s annotations to various works.

The Frozen Deep.

Collins, Wilkie. In The Works of Wilkie Collins. Vol. 4. (New York: Collier, 1900?). p. 495-614.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

Short novella which first appeared as an amateur theatrical drama produced and acted by Dickens in 1857, and this version in prose in 1875. It combines arctic exploration (Franklin search vintage) with a love conflict between two explorers on the same expedition, one accepted and another rejected by the same young woman. The woman claims Second Sight to know the outcome of the conflict (she’s wrong), probably reflecting Kane’s experience with the Fox sisters and telepathy.

Benjamin Leigh Smith: a forgotten pioneer.

Credland, Arthur C. Polar Record 20 (125) May 1980, p. 127-145.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

Smith lived from 1783 to 1913 and took five important Arctic voyages to Novaya Zemblya, Svalbard, and Franz Josef Land. The last, in Eira, sank in August 1881 near Mys Barentsia in Franz Josef Land.

The Arctic in the British Imagination.

David, Robert G. (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2000).
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

Starts with 1818 and Barrow’s Admiralty focus on the north for geographical, scientific, commercial, and nationalistic purposes. David describes three phases:

Gentlemen and Tarpaulins: Officers and Men of the Restoration Navy.

Davies, J. D. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

This is the first scholarly study of the Royal Navy during the reigns of Charles II and James II. Historians have long viewed the Restoration Navy through the eyes of Samuel Pepys, the greatest diarist and naval administrator of the age. Perceptive and intelligent as Pepys was, he presented only a one-sided view of the Navy, that of a bureaucrat attempting to reorganize it. Davies assesses this traditional picture of the Restoration Navy in the light of recent scholarship, using the evidence not only of Pepys but of his contemporaries. He examines the reactions of naval personnel to the demands imposed by Pepys, and analyzes the structure of the service. He also explores the lives and attitudes of the men (the "tarpaulins") and their officers - the quests for promotion, enrichment, and glory; the very different problems posed by peace and war; the nature of life at sea; and the role of the Navy in national life.

Catalogue of the Library of Charles Dickens from Gadshill.

Dickens, Charles. [Arctic books in Dickens’ library, from J. H. Stonehouse, editor.] (London: Piccadilly Foundation Press, 1935).
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

Dickens was very involved in the Franklin Search, including his extremely critical Household Words attacks on both the allegations of cannibalism and on the “savage” Inuit who were the messengers who brought the reprehensible news. This list has some of the fundamental publications on the Search as it developed.

The Wreck of the

Dickens, Charles. Golden Mary.By Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins. (New York: Library Publishers, 1956). [Originally published in Household Words, 1856.].
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

A compelling tale of shipwreck told by Dickens in the first section, followed by a kind of Decameron of tales told by survivors of the shipwreck as they waited for rescue, and the story of the rescue as told by Collins.

The Content of the Kettles.

[Dickens] Stone, Ian. Dickensian 83 (1987) 7-16.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

An even-handed account of Dickens’ attack in Household Words on John Rae’s reports of cannibalism among the Franklin party, reporting Rae’s eventual vindication.

The Polar Rosses: John and James Clark Ross and their Explorations.

Dodge, Ernest S. (New York: Harper & Row, 1973).
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

These two Rosses, respectively uncle and nephew, were arguably the major forces in Polar exploration from Barrow’s initial enthusiasm in the 1810s through to the successful findings of the Franklin Search, that despite Barrow’s loathing for Sir John after the failure of Ross’s first search for the North West Passage. This is an excellent and well-written biography of the two men and their era of discovery.

The Maracop Deep

Doyle, Arthur Conan. (1929) in The Treasury of Science Fiction. Garden City, NY: Hanover House, 1954.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

p. 68: …I have not spoken of the object of this voyage because I have, for my own reasons, desired it to be secret. One of those reasons was that I feared to be forestalled. When scientific plans get about one may be served as Scott was served by Amundsen. Had Scott kept his counsel as I have done, it would be he and Amundsen who would have been the first at the South Pole. For my part, I have quite as important a destination as the South Pole, and so I have been silent. But now we are on the eve of our great adventure and no rival has time to steal my plans. To-morrow we start for our real goal.