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Imagining the Arctic: Heroism, Spectacle and Polar Exploration

Paperback / softback

Main Details

Title Imagining the Arctic: Heroism, Spectacle and Polar Exploration
Authors and Contributors      By (author) Huw Lewis-Jones
SeriesTauris Historical Geographical Series
Physical Properties
Format:Paperback / softback
Pages:448
Dimensions(mm): Height 234,Width 156
Category/GenreHistory of other lands
ISBN/Barcode 9780755600991
ClassificationsDewey:998
Audience
Tertiary Education (US: College)
Illustrations 96 bw integrated

Publishing Details

Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Imprint I.B. Tauris
Publication Date 26 December 2019
Publication Country United Kingdom

Description

Imagining the Arctic explores the culture and politics of polar exploration and the making of its heroes. Leading explorers, the celebrity figures of their day, went to great lengths to convince their contemporaries of the merits of polar voyages. Much of exploration was in fact theatre: a series of performances to capture public attention and persuade governments to finance ambitious proposals. The achievements of explorers were promoted, celebrated, and manipulated, whilst explorers themselves became the subject of huge attention. Huw Lewis-Jones draws upon recovered texts and striking images, many reproduced for the first time since the nineteenth century, to show how exploration was projected through a series of spectacular visuals, helping us to reconstruct the ways that heroes and the wilderness were imagined. Elegantly written and richly illustrated, Imagining the Arctic offers original insights into our understanding of exploration and its pull on the public imagination.

Author Biography

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.

Reviews

[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. * Nordicum-Mediterraneum *