Description

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The image of exploration in the nineteenth century was laden with multiple meanings, and sustained by a rapidly expanding visual culture. In theatres, in art, in verse and song, the achievements of explorers were performed before the public, circulated, promoted, celebrated, and manipulated, whilst explorers themselves became, willingly or otherwise, the subjects of huge attention. Exploration was theatre, a spectacular peacetime engagement, and its representation a series of performances: the idea of whether an expedition was successful or not, depended as much upon what was imagined to have happened as to what actually occurred. Huw Lewis-Jones engaging work explores the making of such polar heroes. It describes how and why a cult of polar exploration was constructed and developed in the nineteenth century, examining the diverse ways that heroes were imagined. It's also a story of how the boundaries of the known world were pushed back as blanks were filled on the charts of the north.

About the Author

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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.