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.

The Cabin Boy’s Log: Scenes and Incidents on a New Bedford Whaler, Written from the Journal as Kept by the Lad on a Three Years’ Voyage in the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

Tobey, Warren B. Boston: Meador, 1932.
  • 1866-69 US Whaling Expedition to Indian and Pacific Oceans.
  • Maritime Reading
 Preview 

p. 18, the Nov. 1866, preparations for the trip of this 15-year old included writing material, a New Testament, and the Episcopal Prayer Book. No indication throughout that he ever used them. Elsewhere there are several passages about pastimes, scrimshaw, boat models but nothing about reading. Notable for the cruelty of the captain to the cabin boy and the sailors.

Secrets of Polar Travel.

Peary, Robert E. New York: Century, 1917.
  • Arctic Reading: United States
 Preview 

A chapter on winter quarters describes lodges he built for wintering in Greenland.

The Cruise of her Majesty’s Ship “Challenger.” Voyages over Many Seas, Scenes in Many Lands.

Spry, W. J. J. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1877.
  • 1872-76 Challenger Expedition of Natural History (George Nares and Frank Thompson).
  • Global Circumnavigations and Cape Horn Transits.
  • Maritime Reading
 Preview 

This round the world voyage was epochal including a visit to the Kerguelen Islands in Jan. 1874. It experienced some polar conditions but not many. It never wintered over, the best time for library use.

On Snow-Shoes to the Barren Grounds,

Whitney, Caspar W. Harper’s New Monthly Magazine XCII (1896) in Five Parts with separate paginations for each.
  • 1894-95 US Overland Journey of Casper Whitney in the Barren Lands.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
 Preview 

p. 360, on the Chipewyans on Athabaska Lake: It is headquarters of one of the four districts into which this vast fur-bearing land of one million square miles is divided by the Hudson Bay Company; the chief forwarding point for the merchandise which the company sends in for trade, and the fur the Indians send out as pay; a general distributing post-office of the four yearly mails which reach this land, where man is but a mere track upon the snow, and not above one hundred of the roughly approximated ten thousand read English writing. It is the most important North-land mission of the Roman Catholic Oblates Fathers, and it is practically the northern boundary of the Cree and the southern boundary of the Montagnaise Indian family, which in its various branches spreads toward the Arctic Ocean.

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.

Tragedy and Triumph: the Journals of Captain R. F. Scott’s Last Polar Expedition.

Scott, Robert Falcon. New York: Konecky & Konecky [n.d.].
  • 1910-14 British National Antarctic Expedition (Scott on Terra Nova).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

These journals include rather little on reading. The expedition’s lecture series implies a good library available to the lecturers, all 13 of them. Subjects included mostly scientific matter: parasitology, scurvy, polar clothing, sledging diets, motor sledges, geology, volcanoes, surveying, Lololand, biology, horse management, Burma, China, India, Japan; Scott himself lectured on the icebarrier and inland ice, and on plays for the Southern Journey. Other topics were coronas, hales, rainbows and auroras, general meteorology, the Beardmore glacier, physiography, flying birds, penguins, ice problems, radium, and the constitution of matter. [see index p. 511-12]

The Franklin Expedition from First to Last.

King, Richard. London: John Churchill, 1855.
  • 1848-59 The Franklin Search.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

King was among the most ascerbic critics of most explorers other than himself, carrying his battles through the press and elsewhere. His expedition was ???

Vodka on Ice: a Year with the Russians in Antarctica.

Swithinbank, Charles. Sussex, UK: Book Guild Ltd, 2002.
  • 1963-64 Russian Antarctic Wintering Expedition.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

Recounts his experience as the only UK citizen on a Russian Soviet wintering expedition in 1963-64. The base was Novolazarevska (on the Antarctic coast of the Indian Ocean) and the personnel 12 Russians, 1 Czech, and Charles.

Scout to Explorer: Back with Byrd in the Antarctic.

Siple, Paul. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1936.
  • 1933-35 Byrd Second Antarctic Expedition.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

Here is Siple’s account of his return to Antarctica on the Second Byrd Expedition. He’s lost a little of his Boy Scott adolescence but is still a young man filled with wonderment at his good fortune of being asked to return, and at the lack of wonder among some of his new colleagues.

Mid-Ice: The Story of the Wegener Expedition to Greenland.

Georgi, Johannes. Translation by F. H. Lyon. [Preface by Einar Mikkelsen] London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1934.
  • 1930-31 German Expedition to Greenland (Alfred Wegener).
  • Arctic Reading: Europe including Scandinavia
 Preview 

p. xii: It is a human document of importance, which will show coming generations till remote ages what German scientists will dare that they may follow their scientific vocation and do honour to their country.

A Voyage of Discovery, Made under the Orders of the Admiralty, in His Majesty’s Ships Isabella and Alexander, for the Purpose of Exploring Baffin’s Bay, and Inquiring into the Probability of a North-West Passage.

Ross, Sir John. Second edition. Two volumes.(London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1819).
  • 1818 First British Northwest Passage Expedition (John Ross aboard Isabella with the Alexander).
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

The first nineteenth-century attempt to locate a Northwest Passage was commanded by John Ross, a moderately successful expedition that ruined his reputation. John Barrow of the Admiralty was so outraged at Ross’s failure to explore fully Lancaster Sound that he did everything in his power to discredit Ross after this expedition.

The Lord’s Librarians: The American Seamen’s Friend Society and their Loan Libraries 1837-1967

Stam, David H. Coriolis: Interdisciplinary Journal of Maritime History III no. 1 (2012) 59 p. Online through Mystic Seaport.
  • Whalemen's Reading
 Preview 

p. 1 Abstract: "The Lord's Librarians" describes in new detail the activities of the American Seamen's Friend Society in distributing loan libraries to merchant and naval ships for over 130 years. Based on the archives of the Society in the G.W. Blunt White Library at the Mystic Seaport Museum, the study examines the history of the Society in its efforts towards moral improvement of seamen, fostering temperance, reducing licentiousness, encouraging Sabbath worship and observation, countering swearing, and promoting thrift and financial responsibility among sailors. It examines the largely evangelical collection development policies for these compact 40-45 volume library boxes, and attempts to locate the surviving boxes and surviving books from these libraries. It ends with some unanswered questions which deserve further study.