Scott of the Antarctic.

Huxley, Elspeth. New York, Atheneum, 1978.
  • Heroic Age 1901-1921.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

p. 14: It is perhaps significant that among the few possessions he was to pack for his first southern journey—possessions so carefully rationed for weight that he had to choose between a pair of socks and their equivalent weight in tobacco—Darwin’s Origin of Species was the book that went into his kit.

The Life of Sir John Richardson.

McIlraith, John. (London: Longmans, 1868).
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

A typical Victorian biography of an exemplary life, with a good deal of material from his journals, and considerable emphasis on Richardson’s religious convictions.

Zebulon: Or, The Moral Claims of Seamen Stated and Enforced.

Harris, John. First American revised edition. Boston: Gould, Kendall & Lincoln, 1837.
  • Arctic Reading: General
 Preview 

A polemical tract about the neglect of the moral condition of seamen in evangelical work. The proposed solutions include development of safe Christian sailor’s homes in all major ports, banking and credit institutions so sailors will save rather than spend their money on drink and prostitutes, and provision of Bibles and literacy training for all.

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.]

She Went a-whaling: the Journal of Martha Smith Brewer Brown.

Brown, Martha Smith Brewer. (Orient, NY: Oysterponds Historical Society, 1993).
  • 1847-48 Whaling Voyage to South Pacific (aboard Lucy Ann).
  • Maritime Reading
 Preview 

An example of a whaling captain’s wife going to sea with him. Whaling wives were usually known for their New England piety amidst the rough-hewn crews of 19th-century whaling ships. This is the diary of one of them, Martha Brown, who sailed from Orient NY aboard the Lucy Ann on August 31, 1847, on an eastward voyage round the world that eventually passed Cape Horn:

Sleeping Island: The Story of One Man’s Travels in the Great Barren Lands of the Canadian North.

Downes, Prentice Gilbert. New York: Coward-McCann, 1943.
  • Hudson's Bay Company.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
 Preview 

A delightful book of Chipawyan and Cree folklore by a regular American summer visitor in the 1930s and early 40s, a Harvard man (AB ’33) and high school teacher at Belmont Hill School. He loved exploring the Barren Lands during his summer breaks between 1937 and 1947. Shows signs of his fairly wide reading on the history of the region, but none of his own reading on this particular voyage. Since he never overwintered his opportunities for reading were limited.

My Arctic Journal: A Year among Ice-fields and Eskimos….

Peary, Josephine Diebitsch. New York: Contemporary Publishing Company, 1894.
  • 1891-1920 Robert Peary and the Search for the North Pole; 1891-97 and 1898 US Northern Greenland and North Pole Expeditions (Commanded by Robert E. Peary).
  • Arctic Reading: United States
 Preview 

An account of Mrs. Peary’s Greenland journey accompanying her husband in 1891-92. She comes across as fairly demure but domineering over both Henson and the natives.

A History of the American Whale Fishery.

Tower, Walter S. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania, 1907. [Publications of the University of Pennsylvania Series in Political Economy and Public Law No. 20].
  • Whalemen's Reading
 Preview 

Tower tells us nothing about reading provision aboard whalers of the American fleet. The book, however, does provide an excellent account of the history and bibliography of whaling for its time and its decline by the end of the nineteenth century.

Green Seas and White Ice: Far North with Captain Mac.

MacMillan, Miriam. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1948.
  • 1940-41 US Private Expedition of Donald MacMillan (aboard Bowdoin).
  • Arctic Reading: United States
 Preview 

The wife of Donald MacMillan gives this account of her voyage to the Arctic on the Bowdoin in 1940 or 41.

Ned Myers; or, A Life before the Mast.

Cooper, James Fenimore. In Two Volumes. London: Richard Bentley, 1843.
  • Maritime 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, in which the narrator [Cooper?] is telling the story of Ned Myers. The repeated cycle of debauchment does become tiresome.

Alone to the South Pole.

Kagge, Erling. Oslo: Cappelens Forlag, 1993.
  • 1992-93 Norwegian Solo Expedition to South Pole.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

An unsupported sledging and ski trip from the Ronne Ice Shelf near the Ellsworth Mountains to the South Pole, ca. 1300 km, with use of GPS and maps. He provides one of the best synopses of expedition reading, at a time when books and reading are being replaced in Antarctica by videos, albeit with a small group of titles.

Climbing the Pole: Edmund Hillary & the Trans-Antarctic Expedition 1955-1958.

Thomson, John. Norwich, UK: Erskine Press, 2010.
  • 1955-58 TAE: Trans-Antarctic Expedition (Fuchs and Hillary).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

An excellent book which skewers Hillary for his disingenuous claim that his trip to the South Pole, upstaging Vivian Fuchs, was a spur of the moment decision, while convincingly documenting that it was Hillary’s intent from the outset of his involvement with TAE.