Griffith Taylor: Visionary Environmentalist Explorer.

Strange, Carolyn and Alison Bashford. Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 2008.
  • 1910-14 British National Antarctic Expedition (Scott on Terra Nova).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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Taylor was born in England but went to Australia at age 12, where he was a student of Edgeworth David, before studying in Cambridge 1907-09 (Emmanuel College). This biography presents him as a brilliant scientist but irascible, vain glorious, and sometimes mean-spirited. A geologist turned geographer he became an ardent geographic determinist, seeing both nature and man determined by their natural environment. He went on the Terra Nova expedition with Scott, and wrote about it in his With Scott: the Silver Lining, the silver lining being the scientific accomplishments of the expedition.

The Substance of a Journal during a Residence at the Red River Colony British North America: and Frequent Excursions among the North West American Indians….

West, John. Second Edition. London: L. B. Seele, 1827.
  • 1820-23 British Chaplain Residence at Red River Colony.
  • Hudson's Bay Company.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
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West was “Late Chaplain to the Hon. The Hudson’s Bay Company” visiting various Forts of the HBC, but mainly serving as chaplain and missionary to the natives at the Red River Colony..

Voyages of a Modern Viking.

Hanssen, Helmer. London: George Routledge, 1936.
  • Antarctic Reading: General
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For someone who participated in Amundsen’s three major expeditions, went to the South Pole with him in 1910, and was captain of Maud on the later Northeast Passage expedition, Hanssen sounds generally as boring as extreme weather reports, at least in this version. There is no indication of a translator, nor any indication that Hanssen and Amundsen may have had a falling out on the 1918-1920 Northeast Passage trip. So the Fram Museum suggests on its website, citing the journals of other participants as claiming Amundsen fired Hanssen because the designation of Hanssen as captain went to his head. If so, even that excitement is concealed in this book.

Two Men in the Antarctic: An Expedition to Graham Land 1920-1922.

Bagshawe, Thomas Wyatt. With a Foreword by Frank Debenham. Cambridge: University Press, 1939.
  • 1920-22 British Graham Land Expedition.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

Elaborate plans made by John Cope, including a flight to the South Pole with George Hubert Wilkins, diminished for lack of funds to a winter spent by Bagshawe and Lt. Maxime Lester in an abandoned whaleboat, turned over to provide some shelter. Remarkably, the two men did perform some scientific work and observations. William Mills called it “the smallest party ever to winter on the Antarctic continent.”

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.

Cranz, David. Two Volumes. (London: Printed for the Brethren's Society for the Furtherance of the Gospel among the Heathen; And sold by J. Dudley, T. Becket & P. A. De Hondt, 1767.
  • Greenland.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
 Preview 

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 U.S. Grinnell Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin: A Personal Memoir

Kane, Elisha Kent. New York: Harper, 1854.
  • 1848-59 The Franklin Search.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
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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.

Redburn: His First Voyage, being the Sailor-boy Confessions and Reminiscences of the Son-of-a-Gentleman, in the Merchant Service

Melville, Herman. . (Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern-Newberry, 1969).
  • Maritime Reading
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p. 47-8: And I remembered reading in a magazine, called the Sailors’ Magazine, with a sea-blue cover, and a ship painted on the back, about pious seamen who never swore, and paid over all their wages to the poor heathen in India; and how that when they were too old to go to sea, these pious old sailors found a delightful home for life in the Hospital, where they had nothing to do, but prepare themselves for their latter end. And I wondered whether there were any such good sailors among my ship-mates; and observing that one of them laid on deck apart from the rest, I thought to be sure that he was one of them: so I did not disturb his devotions: but I was afterwards shocked at discovering that he was only fast asleep, with one of the brown jugs by his side.

The Floating Republic

Manwaring, George Ernest. . By George Manwaring and Bonamy Dobrée. New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1966.
  • Arctic Reading: General
 Preview 

p. 15, on belowdecks life for British seamen: There was no leisure, no leave, no books, to qualify their miserable existence:* there was nothing to make a man feel himself a human being. [Footnote*: In 1812 a shocked Admiralty provided libraries, and the seaman’s life was rendered gayer by the availability of such books as the Old Chaplain’s Farewell Letter, The Whole Duty of Man, andAdvice after Sickness. (Hutchinson, 43.)

The People of the Twilight.

Jenness, Diamond. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1959. [Phoenix Books. Preface by Fridtjof Nansen, dated March 4th, 1928. First published New York: Macmillan, 1928].
  • 1913-16 Canadian Arctic Expedition (Led by Stefansson with Captain Bob Bartlett commanding the Karluk).
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
 Preview 

This version of Jennes’s account of the Stefansson Canadian expedition of 1913 to 1916?? mirrors Dawn of Arctic Alaska but told apparently as a young adult tale. There is no need to repeat passages from that book, but relevant passages can be found on these pages of the Chicago edition: 14, 26, 30, 46, 47, 53, 58, and 62. A few are worth noting here:

The Life of Sir John Richardson.

McIlraith, John. (London: Longmans, 1868).
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

A typical Victorian biography of an exemplary life, with a good deal of material from his journals, and considerable emphasis on Richardson’s religious convictions.

The Alaska-Klondike Diary of Elizabeth Robins, 1900.

Robins, Elizabeth. Ed. with Introduction by Victoria Joan Moessner and Joanne E. Gates. Fairbanks, AK: University of Alaska Press, 1999.
  • 1900 Private Visit to Alaska by Elizabeth Robins.
  • Arctic Reading: United States
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Robins was an actress, singer, feminist, and something of an adventurer; this diary covers only the Alaskan portion of her active life. Among other things she translated Nansen (p. 5), and wrote several novels and other books.