William Henry Seward.

Van Deusen, Glyndon. New York: Oxford University Press, 1967.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
 Preview 

p. 531: He [Seward] had that insatiable expansionist Robert J. Walker draw up a report in 1867 on the resources and geopolitical importance of Greenland and Iceland. [Walker wanted to purchase them for resources but also to encourage annexation of Canada by the US. Seward had it printed.]

David Thompson’s Narrative of His Explorations in Western America 1784-1812.

Thompson, David. Edited by J. B. Tyrrell. (Toronto: The Champlain Society, 1916). [Volume XII of The Publications of the Champlain Society. A new edition edited by Richard Grover, with additional material, was published by the Society in 1962.].
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
 Preview 

David Thompson (1770-1857), after early education at a London charity school where he studied mathematics and navigation, signed on as an apprentice with the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1784, and worked as surveyor for both the HBC and the North West Company.

Arctic Explorations and Discoveries during the Nineteenth Century. Being Detailed Accounts of the Several Expeditions to the North Seas, both English and American, Conducted by Ross, Parry, Back, Franklin, M’Clure, Dr. Kane, and Others. Including the First Grinnell Expedition….in Search of Sir John Franklin.

Smucker, Samuel Mosheim. New York and Auburn: Miller, Orton & Co., 1858.
  • Arctic Reading: General
 Preview 

Although boredom is something that we have all suffered from at some point in our lives, and has become one of the central preoccupations of our age, very few of us can explain precisely what it is. In this book Lars Svendsen examines the nature of boredom, how it originated, its history, how and why it afflicts us, and why we cannot seem to overcome it by any act of will. A diverse and vague phenomenon, described as anything from 'tame longing without any particular object' (Schopenhauer), 'a bestial and indefinable affliction' (Dostoevsky), to 'time's invasion of your world system' (Joseph Brodsky), boredom allows many interpretations. In exploring these, Lars Svendsen brings together observations from philosophy, literature, psychology, theology and popular culture, examining boredom's pre-Romantic manifestations in medieval torpor, philosophies of the subject from Pascal to Nietzsche, and modern related concepts of alienation and transgression, taking in texts by Samuel Beckett, J. G. Ballard, Andy Warhol and many others. He also puts forward an ethics for boredom, discussing what stance one can adopt towards boredom as well as how one ought not to do so. This book arose from the author's attempt to relax and do nothing. Finding this impossible, he thought it better to do something, so he wrote A Philosophy of Boredom. A witty and entertaining account that considers a serious issue, it will appeal to anyone who has ever felt bored, and wanted to know why.

Tragedy and Triumph: the Journals of Captain R. F. Scott’s Last Polar Expedition.

Scott, Robert Falcon. New York: Konecky & Konecky [n.d.].
  • 1910-14 British National Antarctic Expedition (Scott on Terra Nova).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

These journals include rather little on reading. The expedition’s lecture series implies a good library available to the lecturers, all 13 of them. Subjects included mostly scientific matter: parasitology, scurvy, polar clothing, sledging diets, motor sledges, geology, volcanoes, surveying, Lololand, biology, horse management, Burma, China, India, Japan; Scott himself lectured on the icebarrier and inland ice, and on plays for the Southern Journey. Other topics were coronas, hales, rainbows and auroras, general meteorology, the Beardmore glacier, physiography, flying birds, penguins, ice problems, radium, and the constitution of matter. [see index p. 511-12]

A True Description of Three Voyages by the North-East towards Cathay and China, Undertaken by the Dutch in the Years 1594, 1595, and 1596. …

Veer, Gerrit de. Translated into English by William Phillip. Edited by Charles T. Beke. London: Hakluyt Society, 1853.[1ser, no. 13; a second edition appeared in 1876 as 1series, no. 54].
  • Arctic Reading: Russia
 Preview 

p. lix-lxii: The introduction has an inventory of the many relics found at the final site of Barents fatal expedition. No 75 includes the following items: A great number of prints from copper engravings, completely frozen together, including some of Goltzius; Pallas, Juno, and Venus, with Bosscher excudit; scenes from the Bible. “The manner of engraving the names of the engravers proves that all these must have been the work of the sixteenth century. It may seem strange that Arctic navigators had prints or engravings on board, but it is not at all so, for Heemskerck and Barendsz intended to go as far as China, when they sailed to the North-East. For that purpose they had merchandise on board, and prints or engravings were often used as such.

In the Heart of the Arctics.

Senn, Nicholas. Chicago, W. B. Conkey, 1907.
  • Arctic Reading: General
 Preview 

This rather charming account of a voyage with Peary to Greenland in 1905 aboard Erik. Senn was a Professor of Surgery at the University of Chicago, and a veteran medic of the Spanish-American War.

Icebound in Antarctica

Lewis, David and Mimi George. London: Secker & Warburg, 1987.
  • 1982-84 Australian Yacht Cruises (aboard Dick Smith Explorer).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

p. 81, on meeting the Russian icebreaker Kapitan Markov: There were sixteen women on their ship, most in their thirties and forties. Some were very good-looking. I noticed. Some were sailors; some laundry workers. We tied to a rope a copy of Voyage to the Ice, the story of my 1977-8 expedition. It was hauled up and we received in return a guide to Leningrad’s Hermitage Museum.

Correspondence, 1908-1912. AMNH Mss. B67

Borup, George.
  • Arctic Reading: United States
 Preview 

Folder 1: Long letter to his father from Peary expedition, an account of his experience starting Thurs, July 23 from Turnavik in 1908:

An Account of a Geographical and Astronomical Expedition to the Northern Parts of Russia…. Performed By command of Her Imperial Majesty Catherine the Second, Empress of All the Russias, by Commodore Joseph Billings, In the Years 1785,&c. to 1794.

Sauer, Martin. London: T. Cadell, 1802.
  • Arctic Reading: Russia
 Preview 

p. 1: …the Admiralty confirmed the officers chosen by the commander, and supplied astronomical and nautical instruments, the charts and journals of all former navigators from the year 1724, and every other article considered as necessary.

Farthest North.

Nansen, Fridtjof. Jan Krakauer, Series Editor. Introduction by Roland Huntford. New York, Modern Library, 1999.
  • 1893-96 Norwegian North Pole Expedition (Fridthof Nansen aboard Fram).
  • Arctic Reading: Europe including Scandinavia
 Preview 

On Nansen’s 1893-96 Fram expedition and the first wintering over.

The Clipper Ship Era: An Epitome of Famous American and British Clipper Ships, Their Owners, Builders, Commanders, and Crews 1843-1869.

Clark, Arthur H. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1912.
  • Maritime Reading
 Preview 

p. 29, on ships of East India Company: On Sunday mornings the crew was mustered and inspected by the chief officer, and then assembled for Divine service, which was read by the commander, as the Court of Directors required the captains “to keep up the worship of Almighty God, under a penalty of two guineas for every omission not satisfactorily accounted for in the log-book.”

Scott’s Last Biscuit: The Literature of Polar Travel.

Moss, Sarah. Oxford: Signal Books, 2006. Published in NY as The Frozen Ship.
  • Heroic Age 1901-1921.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

p. 73: In place of Parry’s fanfare about the “rational amusements” of the officers, Nansen remarks simply: A good library was of great importance to an expedition like ours, and thanks to publishers and friends both in our own and in other countries we were well supplied in that respect.

A Voyage Round the World with Captain James Cook in H.M.S. Resolution / by Anders Sparrman; Introduction and Notes by Owen Rutter; Wood-engravings by Peter Barker-Mill.

Sparrman, Anders. (London: Golden Cockerel Press, 1944).
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

A Swedish botanist who was taken on board Cook’s second voyage at Cape Town when he had met the Forsters. Sparrman had studied under Linneaus, who had recommended him for a South African botany project. He joined the Resolution reluctantly and suffered/or helped cause the usual hostilities between officers and scientists, what he calls the “contempt of ignorance.”