Focuses on three notable children of famous French families: Jeanne Hugo (granddaughter of Victor Hugo), Jean-Baptiste Charcot (son of neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot), and Leon Daudet (son of Alphonse). Chapter 8 “The Heiress and the Polar Gentleman” concerns Jean-Baptiste Charcot, his two Antarctic voyages, and his much later death by drowning off Iceland. Cambor makes about 15 relatively minor mistakes in the Charcot chapter, enough to wonder about other less-familiar parts of the book.
Gilded Youth: Three Lives in France’s Belle Epoque
Cambor, Kate. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009.
- 1908-10 Second French South Polar Expedition (Charcot on Pourquoi-pas?).
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
Preview
The Voyage of the ‘Why Not ?’ in the Antarctic: the Journal of the Second French South Polar Expedition, 1908-1910
English Version by Philip Wash. New York, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1911. [Reprinted Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1978].
- 1908-10 Second French South Polar Expedition (Charcot on Pourquoi-pas?).
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
Preview
Charcot’s is a rather ponderous book about an important expedition, with several historical excurses in which he consistently praises Antarctic explorers, as if to elevate himself.