Visual Culture and Arctic Voyages
Personal and Public Art and Literature of the Franklin Search Expeditions

Uncovering a wealth of archival information, Eavan O'Dochartaigh gives fresh and surprising insight into the Victorian image of the Arctic.

Eavan O'Dochartaigh (Author)

9781108834339, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 10 March 2022

228 pages
23.5 x 15.9 x 2 cm, 0.6 kg

In the mid-nineteenth century, thirty-six expeditions set out for the Northwest Passage in search of Sir John Franklin's missing expedition. The array of visual and textual material produced on these voyages was to have a profound impact on the idea of the Arctic in the Victorian imaginary. Eavan O'Dochartaigh closely examines neglected archival sources to show how pictures created in the Arctic fed into a metropolitan view transmitted through engravings, lithographs, and panoramas. Although the metropolitan Arctic revolved around a fulcrum of heroism, terror and the sublime, the visual culture of the ship reveals a more complicated narrative that included cross-dressing, theatricals, dressmaking, and dances with local communities. O'Dochartaigh's investigation into the nature of the on-board visual culture of the nineteenth-century Arctic presents a compelling challenge to the 'man-versus-nature' trope that still reverberates in polar imaginaries today. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

1. 'On the Spot:' Scientific and personal visual records (1848-1854)
2. 'Breathing Time:' On-Board production of illustrated periodicals (1850-1854)
3. 'These Dread Shores:' Visualizing the Arctic for readers (1850-1860)
4. 'Never to be Forgotten:' Presenting the Arctic panorama (1850)
5. 'Power and Truth:' The authority of lithography (1850-1855)
6. Conclusion: Resonances.

Subject Areas: Expeditions [WTLP], Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 [DSBF], History of art & design styles: c 1800 to c 1900 [ACV]