First Edition of the English Translation. An authoritative description and history of Greenland and chronicle of the establishment and progress of the Moravian missionary settlements at New Herrnhuth and Lichtenfels. Cranz's work contains extensive discussion of natural history, whaling, sealing and fishing, the manners and customs of the native Greenlanders, their moral character, diseases, health and medicine, language, &c., and an account of early Norse exploration. Dr. Johnson declared that very few books had ever affected him so deeply as Cranz's. The continuation, covering the period 1763 to 1768, includes the narrative of Matthaeus Stach's travels in the south of Greenland, and further observations on the country and its inhabitants.
The History Of Greenland: Containing a Description of The Country And Its Inhabitants: And Particularly a Relation of the Mission Carried on for above These Thirty Years by the Unitas Fratrum, at New Herrnhuth and Lichtenfels, in that Country.
- Greenland.
- Arctic Reading: Canada
A Voyage to Hudson’s-Bay, by the Dobbs Galley and California, in the years 1746 and 1747, for Discovering a North West Passage
- Hudson's Bay Company.
- Arctic Reading: Canada
This volume is credited with definitively disproving Arthur Dobbs theory of a North-West Passage through Hudson’s Bay. It is an important early source on the nature of the Inuit.
Exile in the Wilderness: The Biography of Chief Factor Archibald McDonald 1790-1853.
- Hudson's Bay Company.
- Arctic Reading: Canada
McDonald was head of a group of Scots who emigrated to Hudson Bay and dropped at Churchill instead of York Factory. Several died enroute to their intended settlement on Red River.
The U.S. Grinnell Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin: A Personal Memoir
- 1848-59 The Franklin Search.
- Arctic Reading: Great Britain
Kane was surgeon aboard the Advance, under the command of Edwin De Haven. The search did find the three graves at Beechey Island, but DeHaven felt the voyage to be ineffectual. Kane went on to command the second Grinnell expedition in 1853.
Such is the Antarctic.
- Whalemen's Reading
Christensen was from a Norwegian whaling family who took three expeditions to Antarctica to study conditions of the whaling industry at the time. He owned his own whaling ship, the M.T. Thorshaven, which he used for these trips. It is an engaging account from the perspective of a businessman, sentimentally attached to whaling. There is little about reading on these trips but a few indications of materials available. The book is notable for its discussions of the history of Bouvet and Norwegian attempts to occupy the island, despite its unsuitability for any whaling purposes and its only apparent use as a meteorological station. He also discusses the exploration of Enderby Land, and Riiser-Larsen’s discovery of Queen Maud Land.
Six Came Back: The Arctic Adventure of David L. Brainard.
- 1881-84 International Physical Year US Expedition to Lady Franklin Bay (led by Adolphus Greely).
- Arctic Reading: United States
David Brainard's diary, kept during the Lady Franklin Bay Arctic Expedition which had started out in 1881, is here edited by Bessie Rowland James. Brainard was a Sergeant at the time but attained the rank of Brigadier-General by the end of his career. A remarkable diary for its clarity, regularity, modesty, and dispassionate approach to whatever happened.
Man the Ropes.
- 1930-31 British Greenland Air Route Expedition.
- Arctic Reading: Great Britain
A short autobiography that covers his early Greenland trip with Gino Watkins, the British Arctic Air Route Expedition of 1930.
Tales of a Voyager to the Arctic Ocean, in Three Volumes.
- Arctic Reading: Great Britain
Gillies takes a Chaucerian approach to his Tales, interspersing short chapters on the Voyage with a series of lengthy stories by his companions on this fictional whaler, Leviathan. The stories are either based right at home in England or Scotland, or have an element of the horror story to them.
Climbing the Pole: Edmund Hillary & the Trans-Antarctic Expedition 1955-1958.
- 1955-58 TAE: Trans-Antarctic Expedition (Fuchs and Hillary).
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
An excellent book which skewers Hillary for his disingenuous claim that his trip to the South Pole, upstaging Vivian Fuchs, was a spur of the moment decision, while convincingly documenting that it was Hillary’s intent from the outset of his involvement with TAE.
Within the Circle: Portrait of the Arctic.
- Arctic Reading: General
p. 32: Since 1913 a journal printed in the Eskimo language has published twelve monthly issues each year in Godhavn. Avangnamioq, the Northlander, it is called. It is distributed throughout North Greenland as soon as it is off the press. It is sent in yearly volumes to the rest of the country from its printing plant, which is now housed in the town hall, the House of Assembly.
The Net in the Bay, Or, Journal of a Visit to Moose and Albany, by the Bishop of Rupert’s Land.
- Hudson's Bay Company.
- Arctic Reading: Canada
Account of an evangelizing journey from Fort Gerry to Albany and Moose on the James Bay in 1853, with various liturgical services throughout the trip, by the first Bishop of Rupert’s Land (consecrated 1849). The book is full of pieties but somehow a sense of sincerity breaks through.
The Southern Ice-continent: The German South Polar Expedition aboard the Gauss 1901-1903.
- 1901-03 German South Polar Expedition (Drygalski on Gauss).
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
Drygalski led the first German Antarctic Expedition in 1901-03, as part of Germany’s growing status in the international community with its own colonial aspirations. Its emphasis was scientific research and its chosen region the southern Indian Ocean as centered on the Kerguélen Islands.
Peter Fidler, and Nottingham House, Lake Athabaska,
- Hudson's Bay Company.
- Arctic Reading: Canada
Explorations in the Far North: Being the Report of an Expedition under the Auspices of the University of Iowa during the Years 1892, ’93, and ’94.
- 1892-94 US University of Iowa Expedition to Far North.
- Arctic Reading: United States
This expedition was more ethnographic than geographic, dealing with Cree, Athabaskan, as well as natural history of the Mackenzie region, and venturing as far as Herschel and Wrangel.
Life on an Icefloe.
- 1938 Russian.
- Arctic Reading: Russia
A Soviet paean to Stalin and the system, claiming Stalin’s great interest in Arctic science. There is a heavy dose of communist Stalinism written by a rather pedestrian author but still there is some interest simply in seeing what they were reading.