Fort Monmouth Communications Museum

Fort Monmouth, NJ.
  • 1881-84 International Physical Year US Expedition to Lady Franklin Bay (led by Adolphus Greely).
  • Arctic Reading: United States
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An extensive collection of Greely material, much of it given to Fort Monmouth by Mrs. Stafford in March 1964, shortly before her and her brother’s gifts to the Explorers Club. This included chinaware from Fort Conger (brown floral design) and from the Proteus (2 eggcups), botanical specimens, other artifacts, and a good number of manuscripts and printed material. These were materials retrieved by Peary in 1899 and included letters, condensed meteorological and other observations, etc. The Collection was moved to the Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Maryland, in 2008.

The Home of the Blizzard, Being the Story of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, 1911-1914.

Mawson, Sir Douglas. Philadelphia: Lippincott; London: Heinemann, [1915].
  • 1911-14 Australasian Antarctic Expedition (Mawson).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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Mawson is certainly one of the legendary explorers of the Heroic Age, one who participated in a number of important expeditions, starting with Shackleton’s Nimrod journey. His expeditions were also among those best supplied with books and other reading matter.

Big Dead Place.

Johnson, Nicholas. Los Angeles: Feral House, 2005.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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An antidote to any romanticizing of Antarctic work, esp. with NSF, who Johnson derides as unknowing and stupid bureaucrats. Johnson for all his humor suffered from depression and committed suicide in 2014. There is a bit of reading, and quite a bit about videos replacing books and stateside fashions dictating inappropriate programs, e.g.:

Clement Markham: Longest Service Officer, Most Prolific Editor,

Savours, Ann. in Compassing the Vaste Globe of the Earth: Studies in the History of The Hakluyt Society, 1846-1996. (London: Hakluyt Society, 1996) p. 165-88.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
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p. 168, on Markham’s 1850-51 Greenland expedition: Confined to a tent by a storm, he ‘Read Pickwick aloud, ate, drank, slept and read Johnson’s life of Pope, alternately. Had a duck and sandpipers stewed in green pea soup, for dinner.’ See Markham’s MS. Journal in the Royal Geographical Society, Archives, CRM 3. This entry is from 7 July 1851.

A Voyage Towards the North Pole Undertaken by his Majesty’s Command 1773.

Phipps, Constantine John (Lord Mulgrave). London: Bowyer and Nichols, 1774.
  • 1773 British Expedition from Spitsbergen towards the North Pole (commanded by Constantine Phipps with the Racehorse and Carcass).
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
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Phipps was sent to determine the navigability of the North Pole from Spitsbergen, Phipps's expedition was initially hampered by ice. By sailing east and then northward again from Woodfjorden, the expedition attained a new furthest north of 80° 48'N, a record not surpassed until 1806 (by Scoresby). A solid ice wall blocked further progress, and the ships remained off Spitsbergen making scientific observations. The Voyage contains much information relating to Spitsbergen, though not the famous account of a meeting between a polar bear and a young Horatio Nelson, the expedition's midshipman. In spite of the expedition's relative success, other concerns precluded official British involvement in Arctic exploration until the expeditions of 1818 under Ross.

In Search of the Magnetic North: A Soldier-Surveyor’s Letters from the North-West, 1843-1844.

Lefroy, John Henry. Toronto: Macmillan Company of Canada, 1955.
  • 1843-44 British Surveying Expedition for Magnetic North.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
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p. xi, re an English soldier-scientist and surveyer assigned to Toronto: …with an English gentlemen’s sincere belief in the inevitable superiority of things English….. He loved his Church; and his interest in missionary work never diminished throughout a career which lasted seventy-eight years.

Polar Pioneers. John Ross and James Clark Ross.

Ross, J. M. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
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A joint biography of uncle and nephew with much on other explorers of the time, e.g., Parry. There is an impressive body of contemporary literature surrounding the Rosses and Parry which is well-described here, including the acrimony between uncle and nephew, John and James.

The New North: An Account of a Woman’s 1908 Journey through Canada to the Arctic.

Cameron, Agnes Dean. Reprint edited by David Richeson. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1986. [Reprinted from the New York: Appleton, 1910, edition.] Pagination below is from 1986 edition.
  • 1908 Canadian Overland Journey of Agnes Dean Cameron.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
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An engaging account of a summer journey in 1908 to the Arctic Sea, with much about books and also about Inuit ethnography, etc.

Company of Adventurers: The Story of the Hudson’s Bay Company.

Newman, Peter. London: Penguin Books, 1987.
  • Hudson's Bay Company.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
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p. xxviii-ix: Returned to English possession by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, York Factory was sacked nearly seventy years later by a valiant raiding party of French marines who had dashed north from the West Indies during the American Revolution. Joseph Colen, the HBC Chief Factor in charge of rebuilding it (and York Factory’s first resident intellectual; he moved in with a library of fourteen hundred books), decided to shift operations to their present site….

Carpenter on Erebus with James Ross Clark: character used by Peter Delpeut in the film Forbidden Quest

Sullivan, C. J. Kew Botanical Gardens Archives [JDH/1/7: Antarctic Expeditions 1842-1903 (J. D. Hooker Papers)].
  • Arctic Reading: United States
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This bound, indexed volume contains the following documents: papers and correspondence dated c.1887-1903 relating the National Antarctic Expedition of the HMS Discovery (1901-1904) including a photograph of the ship; correspondence dated c.1842-1843 by J. Davies, J. Savage and C.J. Sullivan whilst on HMS Erebus and HMS Terror (1839-1843), including some poetry by Sullivan; and a lecture (original manuscript and typed transcript) given by J.D. Hooker on this expedition at the Royal Institution of South Wales, Swansea on 17 June 1846.

Herman Melville’s Charles and Henry Book List, 1849

  • Maritime Reading
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“Hardly the carefully ordered reading program of a university, but since Melville declared in Moby-Dick (Chapter 24) that ‘a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard,’ this little library should be taken into account among his early formative influences.”