Prior to his disappearance in the Arctic during an airborne rescue mission, the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen (1872-1928) had reflected in writing on his extraordinary career. First published in 1927 and reissued here in the English translation of that year, his autobiography discusses in straightforward style the numerous difficulties of his many expeditions, ranging from problems of finance and planning through to dealing with life-threatening danger and inevitable controversy. Generously acknowledging an 'old gentleman in Grimsby' for providing materials that helped him plan the first...

Despite the fact that his previous trip to the Arctic had left him gravely ill and with a permanently injured foot, the explorer and physician Isaac Israel Hayes (1832-81) immediately proclaimed his desire to return north. In 1869, aboard the steamer Panther, he was granted his wish. The trip was financed by the artist William Bradford (1823-92), who planned to use it as an opportunity to paint and photograph Greenland. First published in 1871, this account gives the reader the opportunity to survey the landscape, touching also on the history of polar exploration. It is illustrated with a...

In August 1913, the explorer and scientist Fridtjof Nansen (1861-1930), who later received the Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian work, set off from Norway to find a sea route across the north of the Eurasian continent. This 'north-east passage' had been the goal of explorers since the sixteenth century, but Nansen's object, as he puts it, was 'to open up a regular trade connexion with the interior of Siberia, via the Kara Sea and the mouth of the Yenisei'. By the time the book was published in English translation in 1914, the First World War had begun, and the need for ways to keep...

Having participated in a rescue mission to aid John Ross in the Arctic in the 1830s, traveller and surgeon Richard King (1810/11-76) considered himself qualified to suggest where the missing expedition of Sir John Franklin, which had set off in 1845, could be found. In his letters to periodicals, government ministers and the Admiralty, published in this collection in 1855, King argues that the missing party would be located near the mouth of the Great Fish River. He volunteered to lead a search expedition, but was ignored. By 1859, remains of the Franklin party had been discovered near to...

Accounts of the earliest exploration of the Arctic are scattered through many literatures. In writing this work, reissued here in the two-volume English translation of 1911, the celebrated Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen (1861-1930) returned to many of the original sources. Calling on others to help him interpret texts in several languages, Nansen begins his account with the first mentions of the Arctic in Greek literature and ends with voyages of the sixteenth century. He notably questions some of the traditional history based on Norse sagas. Each volume contains lengthy quotations from...

Accounts of the earliest exploration of the Arctic are scattered through many literatures. In writing this work, reissued here in the two-volume English translation of 1911, the celebrated Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen (1861-1930) returned to many of the original sources. Calling on others to help him interpret texts in several languages, Nansen begins his account with the first mentions of the Arctic in Greek literature and ends with voyages of the sixteenth century. He notably questions some of the traditional history based on Norse sagas. Each volume contains lengthy quotations from...

By the middle of the nineteenth century, the goal of the North-West Passage had claimed the lives of many explorers, yet the disappearance of the expedition led by Sir John Franklin occasioned the greatest response. Naval officer Sherard Osborn (1822 75) took part in the search mission of 1850 1 under Horatio Thomas Austin. Osborn was appointed to command the Pioneer, one of two steam tenders on the voyage. This was the first time such vessels had been deployed in the punishing conditions of the Arctic. Such was their success in cutting through ice and navigating the treacherous waters that...

Daines Barrington (1727/8-1800) and Mark Beaufoy (1764-1827) became fellows of the Royal Society in 1767 and 1790 respectively. Barrington's contributions to the Philosophical Transactions favoured natural history, but another of his passions was polar exploration and a potential sea route through the Arctic Ocean. Beaufoy, an astronomer and physicist, was notably involved in discerning changes in the earth's magnetic field. Reissued in its 1818 second edition, these papers discuss Arctic exploration and evidence for the theorised open polar sea. Barrington's tracts, originally dating from...

Norwegian-born Carsten Egeberg Borchgrevink (1864 1934) claimed to have been the first person to step onto the Antarctic mainland when he first visited the continent in 1895. Becoming enthusiastic about Antarctic exploration, he was inspired to organise his own expedition on the Southern Cross, with principal funding from Sir George Newnes, an English newspaper proprietor. The British Antarctic Expedition (1898 1900) of ten men to Cape Adare comprised seven Norwegians, two British and one Australian. This was the first expedition to construct a building in Antarctica, overwinter on land, and...

Enhanced by several attractive engravings, this work, first published in 1881, illuminates Arctic exploration in the region of the Novaya Zemlya archipelago, north of the Russian mainland. Naval officer Albert Hastings Markham (1841-1918) summarises previous discoveries and voyages made in the region by various navigators from England, Russia, Norway and elsewhere. He goes on to give an account of his 1879 voyage aboard the Norwegian cutter Isbjorn, offering details of Arctic flora and fauna, topographical and oceanographic features, and navigational difficulties presented by ice. For those...