National Library of Scotland. Archives.

  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

McClintock Notes : [Murray 12604 1736] McClintock to Murray, generally showing McClintock’s involvement in every detail of the publication of his work.

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
 Preview 

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.

Benjamin Leigh Smith: a forgotten pioneer.

Credland, Arthur C. Polar Record 20 (125) May 1980, p. 127-145.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

Smith lived from 1783 to 1913 and took five important Arctic voyages to Novaya Zemblya, Svalbard, and Franz Josef Land. The last, in Eira, sank in August 1881 near Mys Barentsia in Franz Josef Land.

The Southern Ice-continent: The German South Polar Expedition aboard the Gauss 1901-1903.

Drygalski, Erich von. Bluntisham, UK: Bluntisham Books, 1989.
  • 1901-03 German South Polar Expedition (Drygalski on Gauss).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

Drygalski led the first German Antarctic Expedition in 1901-03, as part of Germany’s growing status in the international community with its own colonial aspirations. Its emphasis was scientific research and its chosen region the southern Indian Ocean as centered on the Kerguélen Islands.

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.

At Sea with the Scientifics: The Challenger Letters of Joseph Matkin.

Matkin, Joseph. Edited by Philip F. Rehbock. (Honolulu, HA: University of Hawaii Press, 1992).
  • Maritime Reading
 Preview 

An unusual contribution to our reader’s list from below decks. Matkin was a seaman, though a fairly well-educated one, on the Challenger, and uncharacteristically for lower deck men kept a journal, the basis of these personal letters about the trip.

Saskatchewan Journals and Correspondence. Edmonton House 1795-1800; Chesterfield House 1800-1802.

London: Hudson’s Bay Record Society, 1967.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
 Preview 

p. ??, Peter Fidler at Norway House in 1800: But he provided himself very well with the means to spend profitably any time he could take off from fur trading or hunting buffalo, for he undoubtedly took to Chesterfield House the instruments, nautical almanacs and books which had been sent to him by the ship of 1799 and on which he had spent no less than £30 out of his salary of £60 for season 1798-99. [Footnote 6: The books sent to Fidler in 1799 were Poets & Novels; Hennes Eng.; Goldsmith’s Grecian History and his Roman History; Charles Hutton’s Mathematical and Philosophical Dictionary; his Compendious Measurer; Diarian Miscellany; John Gay’s Fables; Guide to old age; Charles Vyse’s Arithmetic; an abridged Buffon’s Natural History; Samuel Hearne’s Journey to the Northern Ocean; Monthly Reviews; Annual Register; John Imison’s School of Art; Samuel Vince’s Practical Astronomy; John Wilson’s Trigonometry; and Leadbeater’s Drawing. p. lxxxv-lxxxvi]

The Present State of Hudson’s Bay Containing a Full Description of That Settlement, and the Adjacent Country; and Likewise of the Fur Trade with Hints for Its Improvement, &c. &c….

Umfreville, Edward. Edited with an introduction and notes by W. Stewart Wallace. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1954. [First published London: Charles Stalker, 1790].
  • Hudson's Bay Company.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
 Preview 

An intimate critique of the activities and business methods of the Hudson's Bay Company and one of the earliest narratives of the fur trade in Western Canada and the Great Lakes region. Umfreville had been in the employ of the Hudson's Bay Company for eleven years from 1771, and was at York Fort in 1782 when it was captured by the French under La Pérouse. Upon his release after the Treaty of Paris in 1783, he joined the rival North West Company and was engaged in exploring a new canoe route from Lake Superior to Lake Winnipeg (via Lake Nipigon). From 1784 to 1788, he served on the North Saskatchewan River, commanding at its most westerly post.

I Sailed with Rasmussen

Freuchen, Peter. [Freuchen’s Own Story of the Great Explorer].New York: Messner, 1958.
  • Arctic Reading: General
 Preview 

Primarily a biographical work on Knud Rasmussen. Neat stories on p. 149-51 on making a rotten piece sound enticing to an unsuspecting visitor, and p. 172 about a small boy and a ferocious bear.

Yachting in the Arctic Seas or Notes of Five Voyages of Sport and Discovery in the Neighbourhood of Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya

Lamont, James. London: Chatto and Windus, 1876.
  • 1858-59 British Private Journeys of "Sport and Discovery" (James Lamont).
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

p. 4: In an unpretending little work, descriptive of my former voyages, I had enunciated most strongly the opinion that it would for ever prove impossible to approach the Pole of the earth in ships; but, from reading the accounts of the subsequent voyages of Norwegian walrus-hunters, from an attentive study of the ever-increasing mass of Arctic literature, and from muchconversation and correspondence with those learned theorists who, without ever having left their own firesides, stoutly maintain that there is ‘no difficulty whatever in sailing to the North Pole,’ I was induced to consider whether my own opinion—however practically formed—might not have been too hastily adopted after all.

In Nation Named for Ice, Poets Are Just Getting Warmed Up.

Freytas-Tamura, Kimiko de. New York Times (Dec. 1, 2016) p. A3.
  • Arctic Reading: Europe including Scandinavia
 Preview 

On Iceland (pop. 330,000) as a nation of devoted if sometimes amateur poets: Icelanders are unusually prolific readers and writers, and books of verse tend to sell very well in Iceland. Poetry was the third-largest category of books published in the country in 2014, after fiction and the arts….

Polar Extremes: The World of Lincoln Ellsworth.

Pool, Beekman H. Fairbanks, AK: University of Alaska Press, 2002.
  • Arctic Reading: United States
 Preview 

A sympathetic but not uncritical account of Ellsworth, his problems with his father, his relationships to Amundsen and Nobile on Svalberg to Alaska flight, etc.