Imagining the Arctic

Huw Lewis-Jones is an award-winning historian of exploration, photo-editor and polar guide with a PhD from the University of Cambridge. He was a Fellow at Harvard University and Curator of both the National Maritime Museum in London and the Scott Polar Research Institute. He has travelled widely across the Arctic regions, also voyaging to the North Pole. His many books include Explorers' Sketchbooks (2016), The Crossing of Antarctica (2014), In Search of the South Pole (2011) and Face to Face: Ocean Portraits (2010). In 2015 Huw won the Leif Erikson History Award for his ongoing heritage advocacy.

• CONTENTSList of illustrationsAcknowledgementsINTRODUCTION: THE INVISIBLE THRONEExploring Heroism | Attractive Performances | A Hagiography of Action | Realms of Representation | Polar Celebrity | Newfangled Technology | Spectacles and Showmen1IMAGINING NAVAL HEROESNavy and Nation | A Century of Change | Tars of the Future | Chivalry of the Sea | I will be a Hero | A New Patriotism | Muscular Christianity | Brave Spirits | Duty and Daring | Noble Failure | Curious Cultures of Exploration | Geographies of the Imagination | Arctic Dreams2 NELSON AND THE BEARThe Making of a Myth | The Expedition and the Anecdote | Fact and Fiction | Southey and an Arctic Image | Polar Performance | Continuing the Tale | Nelsons of Discovery | A School for Future Nelsons | Creative Travels | Distorted Truths | Inventing Things 3THE PERILS OF CELEBRITYHero of the Arctic Regions | The Frenzy of Renown | Controversial Beginnings | Reporting Exploration | A Hero in Print | Miscellaneous Missions | Lion of the Season | The Hero Performs | Pub Songs and Ship Ballads | Acts of Discovery | Nautical Melodrama | Reconsidering Re-enactments | Polar Portraits | Panoramic Depictions | Arctic Extravaganza | Reward and Recrimination | The Book | Bitter Criticism | Reputations4A FLIGHT OF FANCYTransforming Technologies | Reconstructing the Life of a Showman-Explorer | Searching for Franklin | First Ascents | Lectures and Lobbying | Balloonacy | Daring to be Different | Flights of the Imagination | Perfect Madness | To the Limits5EXHIBITING THINGSThe New Navalism | Revisiting the Royal Naval Exhibition of 1891 | Appealing Visions | Displaying the Arctic | Propagating Heroic Myths | The End of an Epic | Heroic Sailor-Soul | Inscriptions | Remembering Franklin | Conjecture and Reality | Imaginative Resource6FRANKLIN’S GHOSTCrushed Geographies | Half-Truths | London Stories | Follow After | Durable Illusions | National Diversions | On the Use of Ships | Glimpses of a Marvel | Who Needs Heroes? | Look Again | Chasing BearsNotesIndex

[T]his is a valuable and interesting perspective on the construction of the Arctic as a region in the nineteenth-century British imagination, as well as having wider significance and interest for considering the importance of reception and performance when thinking about travel texts.