Visual culture and Arctic voyages : personal and public art and literature of the Franklin search expeditions / Eavan O'Dochartaigh.

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 04 Mar 2022).

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Introduction : witnessing the Arctic -- "On the spot :" scientific and personal visual records (1848-1854) -- "Breathing time :" on-board production of illustrated periodicals (1850-1854) -- "These dread shores :" visualizing the Arctic for readers (1850-1860) -- "Never to be Forgotten :" presenting the Arctic panorama (1850) -- "Power and truth :" the authority of lithography (1850-1855) -- Conclusion : resonances.

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.