A Woman’s Trip to Alaska, Being an Account of a Voyage through the Inland Seas of the Sitkan Archipelago in 1890.

Collis, Septima M. New York: Cassell Publishing, 1890.
  • 1890 US Tourist Voyage to Alaska (Septima Collis).
  • Arctic Reading: United States
 Preview 

An unusual woman’s trip for the time, written to encourage other women to abandon their grand tours in favor of this northern one. Miss Collis proves to be a self-indulgent, spoiled wealthy New Yorker, with no sympathy for the natives who “should be coerced into good behavior” (p. 15). She was a Jewish southerner who married a Philadelphia soldier, a general in the Civil War. She travelled with him during the war and wrote a book about her experiences in a divided family. That may be a better book than this self-indulgent one.

Master Mariner and Arctic Explorer: A Narrative of Sixty Years at Sea from the Logs and Yarns of Captain J. E. Bernier.

Bernier, J. E. Ottawa, Ont.: Le Droit, 1939.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
 Preview 

Autobiographical collage by the well-known Canadian mariner, with emphasis on his obsession with the North. Introduction by E.T. [?] is dedicated to Bernier’s wife and gives a succinct summary of Bernier’s life including his four Canadian government expeditions to the North. He was a dedicated Catholic, a lifelong teetotaler, and put his faith in divine Providence.

Report on the Dominion Government Expedition to the Hudson Bay and the Arctic Islands onboard the D.G.S. Neptune.

Low, A. P. Ottawa: Government Printing Bureau, 1906.
  • 1903-04 Canadian Hudson Bay Expedition (aboard Neptune).
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
 Preview 

p. 65: Anchoring at the lower place, we were visited in the evening by a number of natives from the encampment. Several books, given for distribution by the Rev. Mr. Peck, were handed out to them, and they immediately held on deck a service of song and prayer. These natives had never seen a missionary, but had learned to read from others at Fort Chimo who had come in contact with the missionaries on the east coast of Hudson bay.

Vitus Bering: The Discovery of the Bering Strait

Lauridsen, Peter. Revised by the Author, and Translated from the Danish by Julius E. Olson. With an Introduction to the American Edition by Frederick Schwatka. Chicago: S. C. Griggs, 1889.
  • Arctic Reading: Europe including Scandinavia
 Preview 

A fascinating biography of the famous Danish-Russian explorer of the Far East of Siberia and the Northern Pacific. The frequent accounts of reading were not from books usedat sea as most of our examples are but are later readings, included here to give some insights into a significant early expedition.

Diary, 1881 July 7—l883 Aug 2.

Rice, George W. Stefansson MSS. 186, Dartmouth College Library.
  • 1881-84 International Physical Year US Expedition to Lady Franklin Bay (led by Adolphus Greely).
  • Arctic Reading: United States
 Preview 

A record of Rice’s experiences as photographer on the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition, 1881-1884. Unpaged but carefully dated throughout.

The Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic expedition.

Alexander, Caroline. New York: Knopf, 1998.
  • 1914-16 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (Shackleton on Endurance).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

A succinct and well-illustrated account of the epic voyage, though not without faults (e.g. she doesn’t have Cherry in Scott’s SP journey, there is no index, and citations are wholly inadequate). But she does use Hurley photographs to good effect.

Sir Francis Drake and the Famous Voyage, 1577-1580.

Thrower, Norman J. W., editor. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984).
  • 1577-80 English Expedition around the World (Francis Drake commanding The Golden Hind).
  • Global Circumnavigations and Cape Horn Transits.
  • Maritime Reading
 Preview 

An handsome volume celebrating the 400th anniversary of Drake’s voyage to New Albion in 1577, a collection of essays by some of the luminaries of geographic and cartographic history in the later 20th century: John Parry, David Waters, David Quinn, Helen Wallis, and Thrower himself, among others. It is full of puzzles, enigmas, speculations, secrets, etc. There is this intriguing passage at the end of Helen Wallis’ substantial and fascinating essay on “The Cartography of Drake’s Voyage”:

The New North: An Account of a Woman’s 1908 Journey through Canada to the Arctic.

Cameron, Agnes Dean. Reprint edited by David Richeson. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1986. [Reprinted from the New York: Appleton, 1910, edition.] Pagination below is from 1986 edition.
  • 1908 Canadian Overland Journey of Agnes Dean Cameron.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
 Preview 

An engaging account of a summer journey in 1908 to the Arctic Sea, with much about books and also about Inuit ethnography, etc.

Journeyman Taylor: The Education of a Scientist.

Taylor, Griffith. London: Hale, 1958.
  • 1910-14 British National Antarctic Expedition (Scott on Terra Nova).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

Has three or four short chapters on his participation in Scott’s Terra Nova expedition.

Manuscripts and Archives Division, Library of Congress.

Clay Family Papers.
  • Arctic Reading: United States
 Preview 

Henry [Harry] Clay, of the Howgate Preliminary Expedition on the Gulnare, was the grandson of the famous Henry Clay of Lexington, KY. Materials about him and by him are in Section II. Box 46, and probably elsewhere in the Library of Congress manuscript collections.