The Snow People.

Herbert, Marie. New York: Putnam’s, 1973.
  • Greenland.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
 Preview 

An account by the wife of Wally Herbert of a year living in northern Greenland and a year-old child and the Inuit.

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
 Preview 

Hayes short book consists of three prose pictures: The Doctor; The Savage; Snow and Ice.

Journal of Transactions and Events, during a Residence of Nearly Sixteen Years on the Coast of Labrador; Containing Many Interesting Particulars, Both of the Country and Its Inhabitants, Not Hitherto Known

Townsend, George. Three Volumes. Newark, UK: Allin and Ridge, 1792.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
 Preview 

Townsend took six voyages to Labrador over sixteen years and this is his personal account of his experiences. Throughout the journal are many references to reading prayers to his family, sometimes twice a day.

Personal communication from David H. W. Wilson, Emeritus Fellow, British Antarctic Survey, January 20, 2014.

Walton, David H. W.
  • 2013-14 Antarctic Study Cruises to Patagonia and Antarctica aboard Seabourn Quest.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

The late David Walton was a lecturer on this cruise and his description of library facilities on the cruise tells a good deal about changes in book and information provision aboard expeditionary ships, including commercial trips, in the 21st century.

A Narrative of Four Voyages, to the South Sea, North and South Pacific Ocean…and Antarctic Ocean. From the Year 1822 to 1831

Morrell, Benjamin, Jr. New-York: J. & J. Harper, 1832.
  • 1822-31 Four US Voyages to South and North Pacific Seas and Antarctica (Capt. Benjamin Morrell aboard Various Ships).
  • Arctic Reading: United States
 Preview 

Morrell opens the work with a brief sketch of his own life, eldest son of a Stonington ship-builder, born in 1795 at Rye, NY. His merchant service seems to have taken him throughout the world.

Dartmouth College Archives. Mss. 98

Stefansson, Vilhjalmur. Finding Aid 1982.
  • 1913-16 Canadian Arctic Expedition (Led by Stefansson with Captain Bob Bartlett commanding the Karluk).
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
 Preview 

Box 5: Diary, April 27, 1914 (Canadian Arctic Expedition); folder 2 has inventory of all equipment and supplies that includes “Stork’s books 10 lbs.”

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
 Preview 

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.

Children of the Light: The Rise and Fall of New Bedford Whaling and the Death of the Arctic Fleet

Allen, Everett S. Boston: Little, Brown, 1973.
  • Whalemen's Reading
 Preview 

A somewhat elegiac tale of the decline of whaling and New Bedford, contrasted with descriptions of the life of the Inuit, before and after the coming of the whalers to the Beaufort Sea area. Main focus at the end is on the disastrous season at Pt. Barrow of the whaling fleet which abandoned over 25 ships, but managed to rescue over 1200 whalemen.

[personal journal on the Henry B Hyde]

Russell, William Bennett. Collection of Maine Maritime Museum (Bath).
  • Maritime Reading
 Preview 

The personal journal of William Bennett Russell during his travels on the Henry B Hyde in 1894 includes an account of his discovery of an American Seamen’s Friend Society loan library aboard the ship:

And the Whale is Ours: Creative Writing of American Whalemen.

Miller, Pamela A. Boston: David R. Godine: Kendall Whaling Museum 1979.
  • Whalemen's Reading
 Preview 

A book of extensive excerpts of whalemen’s own escape literature, their own personal journals, often sentimental claptrap about home, love, and death, but best when devoted to their trade of whaling which they tended to depict accurately and realistically.

Peter Fidler: Canada’s Forgotten Surveyor 1769-1822.

MacGregor, J. G. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1966.
  • Hudson's Bay Company.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
 Preview 

Fidler was a rather obscure surveyor and mapmaker of English birth, who served the Hudson’s Bay Company for over thirty years, just beyond the 1820 amalgamation of the HBC with the North West Company. His interest here is that he was instrumental in buying books for the HBC to send from London to their various posts in Canada. This volume is confined to Fidler’s full journals of his travels for his surveying career. They make little of Fidler’s book life, but it does not that he build a personal collection of 500 volumes which he left to the Red River Colony. He had fourteen children by an illiterate Metis woman whom he finally married. He is someone you’d like to meet. Though he suffered through some very hard times he seems to have met them with a stoic resolve, and he died a rather rich man after years of £100 pay per year.

Watkins’ Last Expedition.

Chapman, Frederick Spencer. With an Introduction by Augustine Courtauld. London: Chatto and Windus, 1934.
  • 1932-33 British East Greenland Expedition (Gino Watkins aboard Quest).
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

p. xii, Introduction: Time may pass, but the memory will never fade of that little tent we shared, the thoughts we shared, the fears we shared; how, during those dark fierce days of blizzard, when travel was impossible, he [Chapman] used to read in a clear tenor from one of our few small books, while the tent shook to the bass of the storm’s accompaniment.