The Life of Captain James Cook.

Beaglehole, John C. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1974.
  • 1768–79 British Naval Expeditions of Captain James Cook.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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This biography together with Beaglehole’s five-volume edition of Cook’s Journals constitute the definitive source on Cook’s voyages and work.

Russians in the Arctic: Aspects of Soviet Exploration and Exploitation of the Far North, 1937-57

Armstrong, Terence. London: Methuen, 1958, p. 17-50.
  • Arctic Reading: Russia
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Includes the remarkable story of the drift of the Sedov , 3800 miles and 800 days, covering some of the Fram route. In addition to schooling in engineering and navigation, there were also classes of ideological indoctrination. In its third year adrift members of the crew were nominated for political positions in Murmansk, and presumably as the only candidates were elected.

Narrative of a Voyage to the South Seas, and the Shipwreck of the Princess of Wales Cutter, with an Account of Two Years Residence on an Uninhabited Island.

Goodridge, Charles Medyette. Fifth ed. Exeter: W. C. Featherstone and sold by the author, 1843.
  • 1820-22 British South Seas Sealing Voyage (Princess of Wales).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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Account of a sealing voyage (starting May 1820) off the Cape of Good Hope which led to shipwreck and abandonment (in Crozet Islands). Curious blend of adventure, piety, and natural history (esp. birds). The unpaginated preliminaries include a preface, index (contents), opinions of the press, and lengthy subscriber lists organized by place and edition.

Voyages of a Modern Viking

Hanssen, Helmer. Foreword by Vice-Admiral E.R.G.R. Evans.London: George Routledge, 1936.
  • Arctic Reading: Europe including Scandinavia
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A very pleasant autobiography of someone who sailed with Amundsen on the Gjoa, the Fram, and the Maud, based on his diaries and presumably translated from Norwegian (though there is no indication).

Glimpses of the Northland: Sketches of Life among the Cree and Salteaux Indians.

Santmier, Arthur. Chicago: Published for the Author by S. K. J. Chesbro, 1905.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
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p. 28: At God’s Lake the work of teaching a school was of a different character. No missionary or teacher had been stationed there, and parents and children were alike totally ignorant of the nature of a school. I arrived at God’s Lake in early September and at once commenced work. The church was a slimsy structure, very cold, and the roof leaked so badly as to render it untenable in rainy weather. There were no desks, chairs or black boards. A few books and slates I brought from Oxford House. A number of children were orphans. I plainly announced in the preceding Sabbath services that only children of school age, that is, from six to fourteen years, would be received, and that I did not conduct a nursery, nor did I want a wife, and therefore grown-up girls could not attend the school, for their sole object in coming was to impress the school-teacher with their charms and thus win a husband if possible.

A Thousand Days in the Arctic…with a Preface by Admiral Sir. F. Leopold McClintock.

Jackson, Frederick G. New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1899.
  • 1894-97 British Jackson-Harmsworth Polar Expedition to Franz-Josef Land.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
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This is the expedition which Nansen found (or vice versa) when returning from his North Polar trip, June 17, 1896. Jackson’s ship was the Windward which took Nansen back to Norway, returning the following July to return the whole Jackson expedition.

Ice and Esquimaux

Wasson, David A. Atlantic Monthly 14 (Dec. 1864) 728-34; 15 (Jan 1865)39-4; (Feb 1865) 201-12; (April 1865) 437-48; (May 1865) 564-72.
  • Arctic Reading: Inuit and other indigenous people
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A series of articles on his 1864 voyage to Labrador on the Benjamin S. Wright with artist William Bradford. Passengers included a Colonel: A Greenland voyager, and better read than any man I have met in the literature of Northern travel.

Antarctic Scout

Chappell, Richard Lee. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1959.
  • 1957- Operation Deep Freeze.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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Chappell was part of a program to send Boy Scouts on Antarctic expeditions, in his case to Operation Deep Freeze II when he was a winterover at Little America. Paul Siple was an earlier participant who became an important American explorer and encouraged this young man who later went to Princeton. The writing is wooden and generally sanctimonious, betraying the author’s youth. Reading is minimal, mostly confined to the Bible (p. 81), though he does find a copy of Murphy’s Oceanic Birds of South America to help his pursuit of ornithology, and he did participate in Little America’s “University of the Antarctic.” At those sessions he studied Morse code and did manage to send off a sample message. He ends with a rather fundamentalist homily based on Matt 28:20: “lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” Chappell does not appear to have published anything else.

Come North with Me: An Autobiography.

Balchen, Bernt. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1958.
  • Antarctic Reading: General
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Balchen, Bernt, 1899-1979—Norwegian/American Explorer and Pilot. From a very early age Balchen was fascinated by the allure of the Polar regions and the prospect of using aviation to explore them. From 1925 until well after World War II he was involved in many of the most dramatic and often dangerous exploits of many of the Polar explorers and he knew most of them: Amundsen, Nobile, Ellsworth, Byrd, etc. and he is widely believed to be the first person to fly over both Poles, with Amundsen in the North and Byrd in the South. He held dual citizenship of both Norway and the United States, and served in the US Army Air Force in secret operations supporting the Norwegian resistance during the World War II.

Account of the Russian Discoveries between Asia and America.

Coxe, William. Second ed. London: J. Nichols for T. Cadell, 1780.
  • Arctic Reading: Russia
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p. 30: at some distance from thence lies a great island called Sabya, of which the inhabitants are denominated Rogii: these inhabitants, as the Russians understood or thought they understood him, made crosses, had books and fire-arms, and navigated in baidars or leathern canoes.

Within the Circle: Portrait of the Arctic.

Stefansson, Evelyn. New York: Scribner’s, 1945.
  • Arctic Reading: General
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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.

. Arctic Manual

Stefansson, Vilhjalmur. Prepared under Direction of the Chief of the Air Corps, United States Army. (New York: Macmillan, 1944).
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
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p. xi: Describes use of Stefansson’s library of over 15,000 books, pamphlets, and manuscripts in preparing his report on living and operating conditions in the Arctic, and also the preparation of this Manual ( 1935-43).

The Discovery of the North-West Passage by H.M.S. Investigator, Capt. R. M’Clure, 1850, 1851, 1852, 1853, 1854.

McClure, Robert John. Edited by Captain Sherard Osborn, C. B., &c…, from the Logs and Journals of Capt. Robert Le M. M’Clure. London: Longman, Brown, 1857.
  • 1848-59 The Franklin Search.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
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HMS Investigator was one of the ships assigned to the western end of the as yet undiscovered Northwest Passage in the search for Franklin and the hope that his expedition had made it through. By confusion or arrangant independence the Investigator proceeded without its companion ship HMS Enterprise, commanded by Richard Collinson. Caught by the ice, it returned to Hong Kong while Investigator headed eastward into the Passage. The ship spent the next three winters in winter quarters until April of 1854 when the men were found by a rescue team from HMS Resolute and they escaped to the east leaving the ship abandoned. One positive outcome, despite several deaths, was that the voyage definitively established the existence of the Northwest Passage’