The Humorous Side of Arctic Exploration: Laughable Incidents that Break the Monotony of the Hard and Dangerous Work above the Arctic Circle, the Eskimos’ Sense of Humor, and Some Amusing Anecdotes of Northern Life.

MacMillan, Donald Baxter. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page, 1923.
  • Arctic Reading: United States
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p. 1, on departures for the North Pole: Some one of the crew inadvertently mentioned the fact to one of these scribes (reporters) that we had no reading matter on board for the long Arctic nights…. In the next morning’s issue the fact was called to the attention of the kind people of New York. That afternoon a stream of books was flowing down East 23 Street to the Recreation Pier, carried by young, middle aged, and old, and even trucks. It was the most cosmopolitan library ever assembled, for there was everything, with one exception…and that exception a Bible—not a one. Peary wondered where they all came from & intended to throw them overboard when out to sea.

The Light that Failed.

Kipling, Rudyard. Revised ed. New York 1899.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
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The Memorial University in St Johns, Newfoundland, has a copy of Kipling’s The Light that Failed. (Revised ed. New York 1899). It has a note on the cover that “This book was on the “Roosevelt” 83 degrees North, the time Perry [Peary] discovered the North Pole 1909.” Question is whether this might have been a title from the American Seamen’s Friend Society portable library that went on that voyage and is now at Mystic Seaport library, but lacking the books from the box.

Writing the New World: Imaginary Voyages….

Fausset, David. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1993.
  • Arctic Reading: General
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p. 3, the exotic literature of Europe: … most clearly manifested in fiction about the regions that remained unknown the longest….their works, too, would finally be overtaken by history and supplanted by scientific descriptions of the material and social worlds. [Fausset’s examples are Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver, Poe, Lovecraft.]

Shackleton Discovery Diaries. Vol. 1 Dec. 1901-1902.

Shackleton, Ernest. SPRI Ms 1537/3/4/1 and 2.
  • 1901-04 British National Antarctic Expedition (Scott aboard Discovery).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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p. 5, Thursday [Dec] 26th: One of the officers of the “Ringarooraa” sent me Swinburne’s “Songs before Sunrise” and two volumes of the Poems and Ballads, but I don’t think there will be much time to read these during the summer; during the long winter far away from the teeming life of the great world one may calmly criticize his rather erotic lines.

Roughing It in the Bush; Or, Life in Canada.

Moodie, Susanna. Two volumes. New York: George P. Putnam, 1852.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
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Mrs. Moodie (nee Strickland) sailed on an immigrant ship of mainly Scots headed to Canada in 1832. She writes with a refreshing candour about the trials and tribulations of life in the Canadian bush, direct enough to warrant a Norton Critical Edition in 2007, with extensive supporting material about her life and work.

A Gipsy of the Horn.

Clements, Rex. London: Hart-Davis, 1951.
  • Arctic Reading: General
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Although not a polar book as such there is this passage on reading during a voyage around the world:

Narrative of the Second Arctic Expedition Made by Charles F. Hall: His Voyage to Repulse Bay, Sledge Journeys to the Straits of Fury and Hecla and to King William’s Land, and Residence among the Eskimos During the Years 1864-’69.

Hall, Charles Francis. Edited…by Prof. J. E. Nourse, U.S.N. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Naval Observatory, 1879).
  • 1864-69 Second Grinnell Expedition (Commanded by Charles F. Hall (aboard Porteus).
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
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Sometimes called Hall’s Second Grinnell Expedition which left Hall dead of arsenic poisoning, probably at the hands of the expedition doctor, Dr Bemmels.

The Arctic Problem, And Narrative of the Peary Relief Expedition of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.

Heilprin, Angelo. Philadelphia, PA: Contemporary Publishing Co., 1893.
  • 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
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Preface [n.p.]: The interest which at the present moment centres about Polar exploration is perhaps broad enough to permit of a few additional pages being added to the lengthening literature of the subject, even though they be wantng in a recital of those mishaps and hard ships which have made Arctic reading so fascinating.

The Gateways to the Pole,

[Maury, J. B.]. Putnam’s Magazine N.s. IV No. 23 (Nov. 1869) 521-537; “The Dumb Guides to the Pole” N.s. IV No. 24 (Dec. 1869) 727-40.
  • Arctic Reading: United States
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An extended and approving study of Silas Bent’s theories of the open polar sea and thermal currents, saying that previous explorers have ignored the natural paths of warm currents & that Bent’s purpose is the humane one of saving lives in fruitless attempts on the North Pole.

Strong Men South.

Menster, William J. Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing, 1949.
  • 1946-48 US Operation Highjump, Byrd’s Fourth Expedition to Little America (aboard USS Mount Olympus).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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A charming if a bit sanctimonious account of Operation Highjump by the chaplain of that 1947 expedition aboard USS Mount Olympus.

Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal: Or, Eighteen Months in the Polar Regions, in Search of Sir John Franklin’s Expedition, in the Years 1850-1851.

Osborn, Sherard. (New York: Putnam’s, 1852). Putnam’s Semi-Monthly Library. [There was another 1852 edition published in London by Longman Brown with different pagination (320 p.) and some variants.].
  • 1848-59 The Franklin Search.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
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p. 21, re Brit. chauvinism: The whaler from bonnie Scotia, or busy Hull, fresh from the recollection of his laird and home, no doubt shudders at the comparative misery and barbarity of these poor people; but those who have seen the degraded Bushmen of South Africa, the miserable Patanies of Malayia, the Fuegians of our southern hemisphere, and remember the comparative blessings afforded by climate to those melancholy specimens of the human family, will, I think, exclaim with me, that the Esquimaux of Greenland are as superior to them in mental capacity, manual dexterity, physical enterprise, and social virtues, as the Englishman is to the Esquimaux.

The Whale and His Captors, Or, The Whaleman’s Adventures, and the Whale’s Biography, as Gathered on the Homeward Cruise of the "Commodore Preble."

Cheever, Henry Theodore. New York: Harper, 1850 [Reprinted Fairfield, WA: Ye Galleon Press, 1991.].
  • 1849 Return Whaling Voyage South Seas to Boston (aboard Commodore Preble).
  • Maritime Reading
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Author is a pious, anti-papist clergyman travelling in a whaler from South Seas to Boston, observing whaling practices and especially critical of Sabbath breaking customs of whalers.

Band of Brothers: Boy Seamen in the Royal Navy.

Phillipson, David. (Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing, 2003).
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
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This is partly autobiographical, partly historical in its description of the training and service of boys in the Royal Navy, a system which did not end until 1956, amply demonstrating the RN’s vaunted conservatism. He attended the nautical school for boy seaman known as Ganges, and neatly compares its ancient traditions with those of his post-1950s education.