Vixere Fortes: A Family Archives.

Madigan, David Cecil. Kingston, Tasmania: Self-published, 2000.
  • 1911-14 Australasian Antarctic Expedition (Mawson).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

This family history of Australian Madigans includes a long chapter (p. 234-+387) on Cecil Madigan, a member of Mawson’s AAE team (1911-14). The latter is based on Cecil’s diaries which are very harsh on Mawson’s leadership and his ability to get the best out of his men. There are a good number of notes about reading:

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.

Diary of the Discovery Expedition to the Antarctic Regions 1901-1904.

Wilson, Edward. Edited from the Original Mss. in the Scott Polar Research Institute, by Ann Savours. London: Blandford Press, 1966.
  • 1901-04 British National Antarctic Expedition (Scott aboard Discovery).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

Wilson was a prodigious reader. In addition to the citations below he speaks often of readings on medicine or surgery, presumably technical books he had with him on the expedition. He was also a devout Christian and would read his services when he couldn’t attend or in addition to attendance. Most notable was his reading of Tennyson’s “In Memoriam” during the fatal polar trip.

The Ice Museum: In Search of the Lost Land of Thule.

Kavenna, Joanna. London: Viking/Penguin Books, 2005.
  • Greenland.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
 Preview 

Joanna Kavenna went north in search of the Atlantis of the Arctic, the mythical land of Thule. Seen once by an Ancient Greek explorer and never found again, mysterious Thule came to represent the vast and empty spaces of the north. Fascinated for many years by Arctic places, Kavenna decided to travel through the lands that have been called Thule, from Shetland to Iceland, Norway, Estonia, and Greenland. On her journey, she found traces of earlier writers and travellers, all compelled by the idea of a land called Thule: Richard Francis Burton, William Morris, Anthony Trollope, as well as the Norwegian Polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen . . . The Ice Museum is a mesmerising story of idealism and ambition, wars and destruction, survival and memories, set against the haunting backdrop of the northern landscape. Bookseller Inventory #0670913952

Cherry: A Life of Apsley Cherry-Garrard.

Wheeler, Sara. New York: Random House, 2002.
  • 1910-14 British National Antarctic Expedition (Scott on Terra Nova).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

A splendid biography of one of the most valuable members of Scott’s Terra Nova expedition.

Voyage to Desolation Island.

Kauffmann, Jean-Paul. London, Harvill Press, 2000.
  • 1970 French Expedition to Kerguélen Islands.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

This Frenchman seems a bit obsessed with boredom, as shown on his travel book to the Kerguélen Islands. The week-long voyage provides “the indispensable prelude to getting to know any unknown country: waiting and boredom.” “Isn’t having nothing to do the supreme test, more even than suffering? Whoever can fill the emptiness of his being, where there is nothing more to occupy it, will survive. He will overcome the cruelest torture: time without limit and without end. Pain keeps one occupied; the man who suffers sees himself in his torment.

The History Of Greenland: Containing a Description of The Country And Its Inhabitants: And Particularly a Relation of the Mission Carried on for above These Thirty Years by the Unitas Fratrum, at New Herrnhuth and Lichtenfels, in that Country.

Cranz, David. Two Volumes. (London: Printed for the Brethren's Society for the Furtherance of the Gospel among the Heathen; And sold by J. Dudley, T. Becket & P. A. De Hondt, 1767.
  • Greenland.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
 Preview 

First Edition of the English Translation. An authoritative description and history of Greenland and chronicle of the establishment and progress of the Moravian missionary settlements at New Herrnhuth and Lichtenfels. Cranz's work contains extensive discussion of natural history, whaling, sealing and fishing, the manners and customs of the native Greenlanders, their moral character, diseases, health and medicine, language, &c., and an account of early Norse exploration. Dr. Johnson declared that very few books had ever affected him so deeply as Cranz's. The continuation, covering the period 1763 to 1768, includes the narrative of Matthaeus Stach's travels in the south of Greenland, and further observations on the country and its inhabitants.

My Life with the Eskimo.

Stefansson, Vilhjalmur. New York: Macmillan, 1913.
  • Arctic Reading: United States
 Preview 

Stefansson’s account of his first trip to the North in which he begins to develope themes best shown in The Friendly Arctic.

The Life of Sir John Franklin, R.N.

Traill, Henry Duff. London: John Murray, 1896.
  • 1848-59 The Franklin Search.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

p. 57-58: Traill cites Beechey’s Voyage of Discovery towards the North Pole of the Dorothea and Trent in which Franklin sailed: It is a most spirited narrative of a voyage the interest of which as a series of maritime adventures considerable exceeded its scientific results…. But considered as a record of manifold dangers and difficulties encountered with unflinching courage and overcome by brilliant seamanship, the story of their voyage must always hold a high place in the history of Arctic adventure.

Ned Myers; Or, A Life before the Mast.

Cooper, James Fenimore. New Edition. Edited by J. Fenimore Cooper. Two Volumes. New York: Stringer and Townsend, 1854. [First published in 1840.].
  • Whalemen's Reading
 Preview 

An 1840 Cooper work in which he served as amanuensis in telling the narrative of Ned Evans attempting to “lay before the world the experience of a common seaman,” such as Cooper himself knew, and which follows that pattern of degradation and conversion. I confess to an early impression that the work was more novel than narrative, and it certainly is an hybrid genre of edited narrative, or a semi-imaginary reconstruction. The repeated cycle of debauchment does become tiresome.

Shackleton’s Forgotten Men: The Untold Tragedy of the Endurance Epic. [1914-17].

Bickel, Lennard. Foreword by Rt. Hon. Lord Shackleton. New York, Thunder’s Mouth Press and Balliett & Fitzgerald, 2000. (Adrenaline classics).
  • 1914-16 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (Shackleton on Endurance).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

p. 72, May 6, 1915: Outside, they heard the bluster grow to gale force winds. Irvine Gaze and Stevens went early to their bunks. Spencer-Smith, as ever, was reading a book by the light of the acetylene lamp.

Ninth Circle: a Memoir of Life and Death in Antarctica, 1960-1962.

Behrendt, John C. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2005.
  • 1958-62 Operation Deep Freeze.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

Much more prosaic than his earlier book on Ellsworth Station, and much less evidence of reading than in that book. Most of what follows is from his diaries of the time and not his connective commentary:

Elisha Kent Kane and the Seafaring Frontier

Mirsky, Jeannette. . Edited by Oscar Handlin. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1954).
  • 1848-59 The Franklin Search.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

p. 55-56, on setting off on the first Grinnell expedition: I collected as I could some simple instruments for thermal and magnetic registration, which would have been of use if they had found their way on board. A very few books for the dark hours of winter, and a stock of coarse woolen clothing…constituted my entire outfit; and with these I made my report to Commodore Salter at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.