The Zoology of Captain Beechey’s Voyage, Compiled from the Collections and Notes made by Captain Beechey….1825-28.

Beechey, William Frederick. (London: H. G. Bohn, 1839).
  • 1825-28 British Voyage to Pacific Northwest to Meet Captain Franklin at the Bering Straits.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
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After three voyages as a subordinate officer Frederick Beechey was appointed commander of HMS Blossom in 1825 and assigned to the Bering Straits to await the arrival of John Franklin on his second overland expedition to the Mackenzie River Delta and on to the Alaska coast. Although Franklin never arrived (they missed each other by only 200 miles), Beechey and his men employed the time in scientific observation, especially of specimens of fish, crustaceans, and mollusks, some from the South Seas but many from the Arctic waters of Kamchatka and Alaska.

Cold: The Record of an Antarctic Sledge Journey.

Gould, Laurence McKinley. New York: Brewer, Warren & Putnam, 1931. [A limited edition was published by Carleton College in 1984.].
  • 1928-30 First U.S. Antarctic Expedition (Byrd on City of New York).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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Gould was second in command of the Byrd Antarctic Expedition of 1928-30 and according to this account had responsibility for forming the Little America library.

The Life of Sir Clements R. Markham.

Markham, Albert Hastings. London: John Murray, 1917.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
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Pure hagiography by his cousin, also a naval officer. Clements had a short but early naval career which included service as the only midshipman on the Assistance on its 1850-51 search for John Franklin. He contributed to the Aurora Borealis and other papers of the voyage.

Arctic Odyssey: The Diary of Diamond Jenness 1913-1916.

Jenness, Diamond. Hull, QU: Canada Museum of Civilization, 1991.
  • 1913-16 Canadian Arctic Expedition (Led by Stefansson with Captain Bob Bartlett commanding the Karluk).
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
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p. xxi: The author [Jenness] was unusually fond of Homer’s The Odyssey. In the summer of 1906, as one of only two students in a Greek class with Professor William von Zedlitz at Victoria University College, Wellington, New Zealand, he was invited to read The Odyssey each Friday evening in Greek at his professor’s home…. during the seven months he wandered about southwestern Victoria Island with his Copper Eskimo friends, in 1915, my father often found moments for reading passages in and obtaining spiritual comfort from a small copy of The Odyssey he carried with him. This book evidently had a special meaning to him, and he continued to extract both pleasure and comfort from it on later occasions, including a time two years later when he was in the muddy wartime trenches in France.

Travels through the Interior Parts of North-

Carver, Jonathan.
  • 1766-68 British Overland Journey to North America (led by Jonathan Carver).
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
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America, in the Years 1766, 1767, and 1768. (London: Printed for the Author; And Sold by J. Walter, 1778).

The Tactless Philosopher: Johann Reinhold Forster (1729-1798).

Hoare, Michael E. Melbourne, Aus.: Hawthorn Press, 1976.
  • 1772-75 British Naval Expedition–Second Voyage (Captain James Cook aboard the Resolution).
  • “Discovery” of Antarctica.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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A straightforward biography of Forster, the Anglo-German naturalist who replaced Sir Joseph Banks on Cook’s Second Voyage (1772-75), along with his son George.

Proceedings of the “Proteus” Court of Inquiry on the Greely Relief Expedition of 1883.

United States. War Department. Proteus Court of Inquiry. 48th Congress, 1st Session, Ex. Doc. No. 100. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1884.
  • 1881-84 International Physical Year US Expedition to Lady Franklin Bay (led by Adolphus Greely).
  • Arctic Reading: United States
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p. 77, part of government inquire into the failure of the relief expedition of 1883 and the Proteus. The witness here is Lieut John C. Colwell:

Finding Franklin: The Untold Story of a 165-Year Search.

Potter, Russell A. (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016).
  • 1848-59 The Franklin Search.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
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p. 11: McClintock found one of these [Franklin whale]boats abandoned on the western shore of the island; in it were two skeletons along with an astonishing array of materials—silver forms and spoons, tea, chocolate, lead sheeting, carpet slippers, dozens of books (including bibles, prayer books, and a copy of The Vicar of Wakefield), and much other such bric-a-brac, which McClintock regarded as “a mere accumulation of dead weight” that would have made hauling the oak-and-iron sledge even more exhausting.

Life Onboard an Emigrant Ship: Being a Diary of a Voyage to Australia.

Mereweather, John Davies. (London: T. Hatchard, 1852).
  • Maritime Reading
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The Rev. Mereweather of the Anglican Church saw it as his unpaid duty to provide moral leadership to the “poorer classes” being conveyed to Australia. Proceeds from its sale would go to the Female Emigrant Society for that purpose.

Biographical Notes.Feb. 6-1877 to Jan. 24, 1960.

Jones, Bassett. Garnered from his archives at AMNH, the Grolier Club, Columbia University Library, and the Explorers Club. The following notes are by David H. Stam, based on his Grolier Club lecture on Jones in 2007.
  • Arctic Reading: General
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Bassett Jones was a consulting engineer who graduated from MIT in 1898, who formed a consulting partnership specializing in elevator and lighting design and installation. He was also a major collector of materials dealing with the polar regions and he and Vilhjalmur Stefansson prepared a major exhibition of their collections at the Grolier Club in 1931-32. He joined the Explorers Club in 1926 when it was on 47 W 76th St. At the time of the exhibition he was living at 1088 Park Avenue and was acting President of the Explorers Club. Not all of his Explorers Club activities were entirely congenial: in April 1933 the NYTimes reported that he was being sued for $50,000 by a former librarian of the Club for asserting that the librarian had sold copies of the Club publication, As Told at the Explorers Club (New York, 1931),for his personal profit. The Times makes no further reference to this slander suit.

A Journey to the North Pole.

Verne, Jules. London & New York: George Routledge, 1875. [Later editions under the title At the North Pole, Or The Adventures of Captain Hatteras. Also known as The English at the North Pole.].
  • Arctic Reading: Europe including Scandinavia
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Novel about an American proposal to auction all territory north of the 84th parallel. The sale was to take place in Baltimore with all proceeds to be divided among underbidders. The English strongly opposed an American purchase, since “The North Pole belonged to them.” The plan itself was to turn the globe on its axis to melt the Pole and extract the coal, while changing the torrid zones as well; but the calculation of the equation to do it proved faulty and the earth was saved. The satire chiefly involves the French poking fun at the US for its North Pole obsession.