The Lure of the Labrador Wild: The Story of the Exploring Expedition Conducted by Leonidas Hubbard, Jr.

Wallace, Dillon. New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1905.
  • 1903 US Personal Exploring Expedition to Labrador by Leonidas Hubbard Jr. and Dillon Wallace.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
 Preview 

As a young lawyer Wallace met Hubbard, an editor of Outing magazine, in 1900 and in 1903 they departed New York to explore the wilder and hitherto unexplored parts of Labrador. It was a difficult journey in which Hubbard died of starvation and Wallace managed to survive and go on to further explorations and successful books. Hubbard’s wife Mina felt that Wallace had disparaged her husband by implying that Leonidas caused the failure—she went on to her own career as successful competitor of Wallace as a Labrador explorer in the “great race of 1905.” All the reading that I could find was Scriptural and from The Book of Common Prayer.

Man and the Conquest of the Poles.

Victor, Paul-Émile. Translation by Scott Sullivan. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963.
  • Arctic Reading: General
 Preview 

p. 75: Barents did all he could to keep up the morale of his flock. By the flickering bear-oil lamp he read them Mendoza’s History and Description of the Great Chinese Empire. Seated in a circle around the smoking fire, their backs frozen, the men listened to their chief, the ‘scholar’ who would one day get them out of the spot they were in. [1596]

That First Antarctic Winter: The Story of the Southern Cross Expedition of 1898-1900, as Told in the Diaries of Louis Charles Bernacchi

Bernacchi, Louis Charles. Written and Edited by Janet Crawford. Christchurch, NZ: South Latitude Research Limited, 1998.
  • 1898–1900 British Antarctic Expedition (Carsten Borchgrevink on Southern Cross).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

A rather heavily edited version of Bernacchi’s diaries together with passages from To the South Polar Regions, with connecting commentary of tedious nature, until the end. Most interesting are the feuds between Borchgrevink and Bernacchi, which are well-captured in the text. Not much reference to reading, books, etc., nor the supposedly decent library aboard ship. Here are a few references:

Copy-book of Letters Outward &c. begins…. 1679-1694.

Hudson’s Bay Company. Edited by E. E. Rich. (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1948). [Hudson’s Bay Record Society, v. 11].
  • Hudson's Bay Company.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
 Preview 

This is a large and impressive compilation from the London office of the Company in London to Company officials in Lord Rupert’s land during the early years of the Company. The period includes the brief French capture of the Prince of Wales Fort at Churchill.

The North Georgia Gazette, and Winter Chronicle.

London: John Murray, 1821. [Reprint edition of paper circulated aboard Hecla on Parry’s Northwest Passage expedition, 1819-20.].
  • 1819-20 British Voyage of Discovery to the Arctic Regions (Edward Parry aboard Hecla and Griper).
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

Monday, the 1st of November, 1819, will ever be memorable in the history of literature. On that day appeared, composed, edited, but not printed, within the arctic circle, within fifteen degree of the North Pole of the earth, the first number of the “North Georgian Gazette, or Winter Chronicle;”—a work, take it all in all, without a fellow.

Cape Clay Diary, March 1 – June 21, 1884.

Brainard, David L. Dartmouth Digital Collections. https://collections.dartmouth.edu/teitexts/brainard-diary/diplomatic/brainard-2-diary-diplomatic.html.
  • 1881-84 International Physical Year US Expedition to Lady Franklin Bay (led by Adolphus Greely).
  • Arctic Reading: United States
 Preview 

To an almost hallucinatory degree, this diary by one of the six survivors is remarkably full of recipes and lists of foods and ingredients. A veritable wish list for foods, and even desirable books, as in entry below:

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 National Maritime Digital Library.
  • Maritime 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.

Fifteen Months in the Antarctic [Voyage of the Belgica].

Gerlache de Gomery, Adrien de. Trans. by Maurice Raraty. Bluntisham, U.K., Erskine Press and Bluntisham Books, 1998 [1902].
  • 1897-99 Belgian Antarctic Expedition (Gerlache de Gomery aboard Belgica).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

This is a judicious, fair-minded, and good book depicting a relatively placid expedition with a tolerant and forgiving crew. Between the lines I detect far more tensions than Gerlache wishes to admit or reveal, at least in this translation.

Saskatchewan Journals and Correspondence. Edmonton House 1795-1800; Chesterfield House 1800-1802.

London: Hudson’s Bay Record Society, 1967.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
 Preview 

p. ??, Peter Fidler at Norway House in 1800: But he provided himself very well with the means to spend profitably any time he could take off from fur trading or hunting buffalo, for he undoubtedly took to Chesterfield House the instruments, nautical almanacs and books which had been sent to him by the ship of 1799 and on which he had spent no less than £30 out of his salary of £60 for season 1798-99. [Footnote 6: The books sent to Fidler in 1799 were Poets & Novels; Hennes Eng.; Goldsmith’s Grecian History and his Roman History; Charles Hutton’s Mathematical and Philosophical Dictionary; his Compendious Measurer; Diarian Miscellany; John Gay’s Fables; Guide to old age; Charles Vyse’s Arithmetic; an abridged Buffon’s Natural History; Samuel Hearne’s Journey to the Northern Ocean; Monthly Reviews; Annual Register; John Imison’s School of Art; Samuel Vince’s Practical Astronomy; John Wilson’s Trigonometry; and Leadbeater’s Drawing. p. lxxxv-lxxxvi]

The Night Side of Dickens.

Stone, Ian. (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1994).
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

p. 544, Dickens library contained many volumes on Arctic voyages and several on Franklin.

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
 Preview 

This biography together with Beaglehole’s five-volume edition of Cook’s Journals constitute the definitive source on Cook’s voyages and work.

The Journal of Rochfort Maguire, 1852-1854: Two Years at Point Barrow, Alaska, aboard HMS Plover in the Search for Sir John Franklin.

Maguire, Rochfort. Edited by John Bockstoce. (London: Hakluyt Society, 1988).
  • 1848-59 The Franklin Search.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

During the Franklin Search it appeared that Franklin’s ships might well have made it through the Northwest Passage and might be met at the western end of the Passage at Point Barrow or the Baring Strait. The Plover was given the ultimate but fruitless duty of looking for that possibility.