The Arctic

This anthology gathers first-hand accounts and related writings about the high north: searches for the North-West Passage and the North Pole, icebound winters, contact with Inuit peoples, and the disappearance of Franklin's ships. Typical pieces are expedition journals, later reconstructions of vanished parties, and shorter literary or scientific sketches of cold, light, and scarcity. Recurring figures include nineteenth-century naval and overland commanders and the crews who hauled sledges and wintered in the pack. There is no single plot. The volume is a collection of Arctic testimony, not a continuous history of the polar regions and not a manual of survival technique.

Bound in cloth printed and blocked in shades of blue and white with an inset monochrome photo on cover. Cloth slipcase printed with an angular pattern in shades of blue and white.