James Eight and the Palmer-Pendleton Expedition of 1829-1831,

Bertrand, Kenneth J. Chapter 9 in Americans in Antarctica, 1775-1948. New York: American Geographical Society, 1971, p. 144-58.
  • 1829-30 First Preliminary US Exploring Expedition (Annawan and Seraph with Captains Nathaniel Palmer and Benjamin Pendleton).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

p. 146-47: The scientific program of the expedition was sponsored by the Lyceum for Natural History of the City of New York. Newspapers encouraged private citizens to lend books, charts, and instruments to the expedition, and when the Annawan sailed it was said to have on board a fine collection of instruments and several hundred books.

Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition.

Beattie, Owen, and John Geiger. Vancouver, B.C., GreyStone Books, 1987.
  • 1848-59 The Franklin Search.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

A rather lacklustre book about the exhumation of three Franklin sailors in 1984. Spectacular for its pictures of the corpses; less so for a few things about books.

The Remarkable History of the Hudson’s Bay Company Including that of the French Traders of North-Western Canada and of the North-West, XY, and Astor Fur Companies.

Bryce, George. London: Sampson Low, Marston & Company, 1900.
  • Hudson's Bay Company.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
 Preview 

A general history of the Company from the seventeenth century until the end of the Reil Rebellion until after 1870 and the Company’s “great prospect” at the beginning of the twentieth century. He tries to recount with fairness the problems of the Company, its dubious Charter, the feud with Dobbs over Hudson Bay as the route to the NW Passage, problems with both Catholics and the metis, but he is too pro-British and anti-Catholic to be totally convincing. But he does show the urbane education and wide reading of many of the traders.

A Man’s Woman.

Norris, Frank. New York: Doubleday & McClure, 1900.
  • Arctic Reading: United States
 Preview 

Norris’s turn-of-the-century novel is loosely based on George Washington De Long’s U.S. North Polar expedition aboard the Jeannette (1879-81). It borrows freely from the locale (Wrangell Island and environs), the beset and crushed ship, the forced march on ice and pressure ridges, the heroic commander, the few survivors finally rescued. He adds the love interest, a strong-minded woman who resists the commander, succumbs, marries, and subtly convinces the hero that he is the one who must achieve the North Pole for the United States, knowing his safe return to be doubtful. He sails from New York in a new ship clearly modeled on Nansen’s Fram. Sources in Greely’s expedition and parallels with Robert E. Peary, who had already begun his North Pole quest and was in Northern Ellesmere land at the time of publication, are easily drawn.

To the Arctic: The Story of Northern Exploration from Earliest Times to the Present.

Mirsky, Jeannette. With an Introduction by Vilhjalmur Stefansson. [First published as To the North in 1934.]. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970.
  • Arctic Reading: General
 Preview 

p. 103, on Parry’s 1819-20 expedition: A school was formed to teach the men to read and write. Captain Sabine edited a weekly, the North Georgia Gazette and Winter Chronicle, for the amusement of the officers, and they in turn amused the men. Fortnightly a farce that had had a successful run in London was given. Christmas was celebrated by a special dinner and an operetta, Northwest Passage. [A facsimile page of the gazette is on p. 102.]

Books Afloat & Ashore: a History of Books, Libraries, and Reading among Seamen during the Age of Sail.

Skallerup, Harry Robert. (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1974).
  • Maritime Reading
 Preview 

p. 4: In 1631, when Captain Thomas James fitted out his vessel in Bristol for a voyage in search of the Northwest Passage, he purchased ‘A Chest full of the best and choicest Mathematicall bookes that could be got for money in England; as likewise Master Hackluite and Master Purchase, and other books of Journals and Histories. [see C Miller, ed. Voyages of Captain Luke Fox of Hull, Hakluyt Soc. London 1894, p. 265-67, 606 p.]

Pursuing the Whale: A Quarter-Century of Whaling in the Arctic.

Cook, John A. With an Introduction by Allan Forbes. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1926.
  • Whalemen's Reading
 Preview 

Semi-autobiographical homespun yarns by a Provincetown whaleman and his career from 1868 to 1916, aboard many vessels including the Charles W. Morgan. They are interesting stories but not too revealing of the author. Cook’s wife often accompanied him on his journeys. In 1894, he was Captain of the bark Navarch which wintered at Herschel Island during that year in company with other whalers and other women.

South Latitude.

Ommanney, Francis Downes. London: Longmans, 1938.
  • Whalemen's Reading
 Preview 

A beautifully written book on whaling in the Weddell Sea, where R.R.S. Discovery II was trapped (like Endurance) but escaped.

“Antarctic” zwei Jahre in Schnee und Eis am Südpol.

Nordenskjöld, Otto. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer, 1904.
  • 1901-04 Swedish Antarctic Expedition (Otto Nordenskjöld).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

The German edition of Nordenskjöld’s book contains several photographs of reading spaces, esp. opp. p. 210, the author at his worktable.

Across the Sub-Arctics [sic] of Canada. A Journey of 3,200 Miles by Canoe and Snowshoe through the Hudson Bay Region.

Tyrrell, James W. Third Edition. Toronto: William Briggs, 1908. [First published in 1897].
  • 1893 Canadian Overland Expedition through Hudson Bay Region (James W. Tyrell).
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
 Preview 

Tyrrell was accompanied by his brother, J. B. Tyrrell, on this 1893 excursion. He was responsible for most of the photographs, and this book is dedicated to him. Not very much on reading during this short expedition.

A Man-of-War Library,

Melville, Herman. in White-Jacket, or The world in a Man-of-War. (New York: Library of America, 1983) p. 522-24:.
  • Whalemen's Reading
 Preview 

Chapter 41. A Man-of-War Library

Dr John Rae.

Richards, Robert L. Whitby, Yorkshire: Caedmon of Whitby Publishers, 1985.
  • Arctic Reading: General
 Preview 

p. 35: Rae happily spent the winter [1845] at York Factory. He built a ‘laboratory’ and occupied himself with meteorological observations and he taught some of his men to assist him. The company [HBC] maintained a small library at York and Rae used it to continue his study of natural history, botany, geology and other subjects.

The Observations of Sir Richard Hawkins, Knt in His Voyage into the South Sea in the Year 1598.

Hawkins, Richard. Edited by C. R. Drinkwater Bethune. (London: Hakluyt Society, 1867).
  • Global Circumnavigations and Cape Horn Transits.
  • Maritime Reading
 Preview 

p. x-xi, quoting from North West Fox, or Fox from the North-west passage, London, 1635: And for books, if I wanted any I was to blame, being bountifully furnisht from the treasury with money to provide me, especially for those of study there would be no leisure, nor was there for I found work enough.