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.

CONTENTS List of illustrations Acknowledgements INTRODUCTION: THE INVISIBLE THRONE Exploring Heroism | Attractive Performances | A Hagiography of Action | Realms of Representation | Polar Celebrity | Newfangled Technology | Spectacles and Showmen1 IMAGINING NAVAL HEROES Navy 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 BEAR The 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 3 THE PERILS OF CELEBRITY Hero 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 | Reputations4 A FLIGHT OF FANCY Transforming 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 Limits5 EXHIBITING THINGS The 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 Resource6 FRANKLIN'S GHOST Crushed 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 Bears Notes Index