Pictures of Arctic Travel. Greenland.

Hayes, Isaac I. New York: G.W. Carleton & Co., 1881.
  • 1860-61 US North Pole Expedition (aboard United States, commanded by Isaac Hayes).
  • Arctic Reading: United States
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Hayes short book consists of three prose pictures: The Doctor; The Savage; Snow and Ice.

Voyages of Discovery in the Arctic and Antarctic Seas, and Round the World: being Personal Narratives of Attempts to Reach the North and South Poles; and of an Open-boat Expedition up the Wellington Channel in Search of Sir John Franklin and Her Majesty’s ships “Erebus” and “Terror,” in Her Majesty’s Boat “Forlorn Hope,” under the Command of the Author. To which are Added an Autobiography….

M’Cormick, Robert. In Two Volumes. (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, and Rivington, 1884).
  • Maritime Reading
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The author participated in three polar expeditions, an early 1827 North Pole attempt, the famous James Ross Clark Antarctic expedition on Erebus and Terror (1839-1843), and a Franklin Search expedition searching for the same two ships. The Ross voyage was the circumnavigation of M’Cormick’s title. [See the Anthology of the Antarctic Reading Experience under 1839.]

The Eskimo of Baffin Land and Hudson Bay….

Boas, Franz. [ Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History . Volume XV, 1901] New York: AMNH, 1901.
  • Arctic Reading: Inuit and other indigenous people
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Boas’s work says nothing about Inuit reading but is included here for his lengthy accounts of oral tales from Cumberland Sound (81) and from the West Coast of Hudson Bay (30). Here is one brief example chosen at random:

A Sequel to the North-West Passage, and the Plans for the Search for Sir John Franklin. A Review.

Brown, John. London: E. Stanford, 1860.
  • 1848-59 The Franklin Search.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
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This follow-up adds some opinion defending Franklin as the discoverer of the North-West Passage, but doesn’t appear to add much more on the Franklin Search and the earlier book. But the Harvard copy is an interesting one (Harvard Tower 120.) Presentation copy from John Barrow (Sir John Barrow’s son), with letters laid in, one dated Nov. 16, 1860: I am compelled again to differ with high arctic authority which is a matter rather of regret to me.—as you know how much I esteem

Through the First Antarctic Night, 1898-1899.

Cook, Frederick A. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s Univ. Press, 1980. First published 1900.
  • 1897-99 Belgian Antarctic Expedition (Gerlache de Gomery aboard Belgica).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

Some of this book, such as the description of the pinup contest and an obvious double entendre or two, is rather childish, but the book does give a different and quite positive perspective on Cook, though rejected by his enemies like Skelton or Peary.

Cold: The Record of an Antarctic Sledge Journey.

Gould, Laurence McKinley. New York: Brewer, Warren & Putnam, 1931. [A limited edition was published by Carleton College in 1984.].
  • 1928-30 First U.S. Antarctic Expedition (Byrd on City of New York).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

Gould was second in command of the Byrd Antarctic Expedition of 1928-30 and according to this account had responsibility for forming the Little America library.

Either/Or

Kierkegaard, Søren. Translated by David F. Swenson and Lillian Marin Swenson. Volume I. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1959.
  • Arctic Reading: General
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p. 281, in “The Rotation Method” section (p. 279-96): Starting from a principle is affirmed by people of experience to be a very reasonable procedure; I am willing to humor them, and so begin with the principle that all men are bores. Surely no one will prove himself so great a bore as to contradict me in this. The principle possesses the quality of being in the highest degree repellent, an essential requirement in the case of negative principles, which are in the last analysis the principles of all motion. It is not merely repellent, but infinitely forbidding; and whoever has this principle back of him cannot but receive an infinite impetus forward, to help him make new discoveries. For; if my principle is true, one need only consider how ruinous boredom is for humanity, and by properly adjusting the intensity of one’s concentration upon this fundamental truth, attain any desired degree of momentum. Should one wish to attain the maximum momentum, even to the point of almost endangering the driving power, one need only say to oneself: Boredom is the root of all evil. Strange that boredom, in itself so staid and stolid, should have such power to set in motion. The influence it exerts is altogether magical, except it is not the influence of attraction, but of repulsion.

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.

Proceedings of the “Proteus” Court of Inquiry on the Greely Relief Expedition of 1883.

United States. War Department. Proteus Court of Inquiry. 48th Congress, 1st Session, Ex. Doc. No. 100. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1884.
  • 1881-84 International Physical Year US Expedition to Lady Franklin Bay (led by Adolphus Greely).
  • Arctic Reading: United States
 Preview 

p. 77, part of government inquire into the failure of the relief expedition of 1883 and the Proteus. The witness here is Lieut John C. Colwell:

The Arctic Whalers.

Lubbock, Basil. Glasgow: Brown, Son and Ferguson, 1937.
  • Whalemen's Reading
 Preview 

An engaging history of Arctic whaling.

Fighting the Icebergs.

Bullen, Frank (Franklin) Thomas. London: James Nesbet & Co., 1910.
  • Maritime Reading
    Whalemen's Reading
 Preview 

A novel about a whaleman and his foundling ‘son’ who learns everything about whaling from his ‘father’: the book is a good fictional introduction to whaling, a teetotaler tract (the father becomes sober as soon as he has responsibility for the boy), and a tearjerker. Towards the end of the book the author says that the boy was inculcated at an early age in the habit of reading. But there is a little bit of everything here: a happy crew converted from alcoholism, the mendacity of the owners, the death of the captain/father, the nip and sinking of their vessel, the success of the son, and his final marriage to a petticoat sailor.

Gender on Ice.

Bloom, Lisa. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1993.
  • Arctic Reading: General
 Preview 

A study of gender bias in polar exploration and its depiction in the National Geographic.