Journal of a Second Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific; Performed in the Years 1821-22-23, in His Majesty’s Ships Fury and Hecla, Under the Orders of Captain William Edward Parry, R.N/. F.R.S., and Commander of the Expedition.

Parry, William Edward. London: John Murray, 1824.
  • 1821–23 Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage (in Fury and Hecla, under William Edward Parry).
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

Parry’s second voyage involved two year’s of winterovering in Winter Harbour, including a number of interactions with natives. There is little here on reading,unlike Lyon’s earlier private journal.

Etah and Beyond: Or, Life Within Twelve Degrees of the Pole.

MacMillan, Donald Baxter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1927.
  • 1926-27 US Northern Greenland Expedition (commanded by Donald MacMillan aboard Bowdoin).
  • Greenland.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
 Preview 

A 1926-27 Greenland expedition aboard the Bowdoin, with the purpose of setting up new magnetic stations and resettling old ones.

Island of the Lost.

Cooper, Paul Fenimore. (New York: G. P. Putnam’s sons, 1961).
  • 1848-59 The Franklin Search.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

This is an elegant little book posing as a biography of King William Island and a vehicle for telling its indigenous history, the story of the Franklin debacle (prior to discovery of the sunken Erebus), and a fairly brief account of the Franklin Search.

The American on the Endurance: Ice, Sea, and Terra Firma Adventures of William L. Bakewell.

Bakewell, William L. [Edited by Mary Elizabeth Rajala.] Munising, MI: Dukes Hall Publishing, 2004.
  • 1914-16 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (Shackleton on Endurance).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

Homespun memoir of a footloose and feckless wanderer from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, who happened to be in Buenos Aires in 1914 when Shackleton was looking for an able bodied seaman and took Bakewell on for the voyage.

In Search of a Siberian Klondike as Narrated by Washington B. Vanderlip the Chief Actor and Herein Set Forth by Homer B. Hulbert.

Vanderlip, Washington V. New York: The Century Co., 1908.
  • 1896 Russian-Sponsored Overland Expedition by American W. V. Vanderlip in Search of Gold.
  • Arctic Reading: Russia
 Preview 

Hard to know whether the charm of this book is to the narrator or amanensis, but it is a delight to read both for its human interactions and its elements of natural history and hunting. These exxcerpts give some flavor of the book, and there are a few comments on language and literature.

Searching for the Franklin Expedition. The Arctic Journal of Robert Randolph Carter.

Carter, Robert Randolph. (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1998).
  • 1848-59 The Franklin Search.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

Private journal of a cruise in the Brig Rescue in search of Franklin, together with the Advance. Part of US Grinnell Expedition in 1850, one of 12 search vessels that year. Carter was first officer of the Rescue, a small ship that wintered in 1850-51 off Beechey Island in, where the bodies of three of Franklin’s menrs had been found. Clearly Carter is intelligent witty and educated. p. 10: The headquarters [of the expedition] were the luxurious Astor House, whose accommodations were provided by the management; and the Grinnells had already stocked the ships’ libraries with books, many written by earlier Arctic explorers.

Memo

Osborne, Henry Fairfield. From AMNH Central Archive 488, Febr. 10, 1913.
  • 1910-14 British National Antarctic Expedition (Scott on Terra Nova).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

AMNH President, Henry Fairfield Osborne: I am inexpressibly shocked and grieved to learn of the disaster that has overtaken the members of the Scott Expedition to the South Pole. The blow is as unexpected as it is crushing. Captain Amundsen confidently expected that the Scott party would reach the tent, records and welcome which he left at Solheim. Only recently in conversation, both Captain Amundsen and Sir Ernest Shackleton have expressed to me their expectation of soon hearing favorably from this fourth attempt to conquer the South Pole. Neither expressed the least doubt as to the result. It is a fresh demonstration of the great hazards attending extreme Arctic exploration. …

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.

Vitus Bering: The Discoverer of 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: Russia
 Preview 

A defense of Baring and his achievements verging on hagiography, taking on his early critics quite convincingly.

A Gipsy of the Horn.

Clements, Rex. London: Hart-Davis, 1951.
  • Arctic Reading: General
 Preview 

Although not a polar book as such there is this passage on reading during a voyage around the world:

Ethnological Results of the Point Barrow Expedition.

Murdoch, John. Introduction by William W. Fitzhugh. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1988. [First published 1892.].
  • 1881-83 International Physical Year US Expedition to Point Barrow Alaska (Ray).
  • Arctic Reading: United States
 Preview 

p. xvii, re IPY cruise on Golden Fleece to Point Barrow, Aug 8, 1881, Murdoch to Richard Rathbun at Smithsonian: The hold and the deck are filled with our stuff, while we are so crowded in the cabin that we are only able to keep out the simple necessary articles and a few books. … I had hoped to have things so that I might do some work on the voyage up, but the vessel is so small and we have so much material that it is entirely out of the question…. They feed us well and by reading, writing, eating and sleeping we manage to fill up the time.