Historical Travelers

  • Mostly travel writing by and about western women artists and scientists.
  • Not at all comprehensive for the Arctic, especially by and about native circumpolar peoples
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are those of LK and do not reflect the views of Barnard College
Historical Travelers
Pole Year Title Author
N 1893 My Arctic Journal Josephine Peary
N 1901 The Snow Baby Josephine Peary
N 1954 Woman in the Polar Night Christiane Ritter (Austrian painter spends a year in Spitsbergen in 1933). Reissued by Univ. Alaska Press, 2010.
S 1956 My Antarctic Honeymoon Jenny Darlington
N 1962 Two in the Far North Margaret Murie (Alaskan life of a 'grandmother of the conservation movement').
N 1985 Women of the Four Winds: The Adventures of Four of America's First Women Explorers Elizabeth Fagg Olds (chapter on Louise Arner Boyd, who explored Greenland in the 1930s)
N 1987 The New North: An Account of a Woman's 1908 Journey Through Canada to the Arctic Agnes Deans Cameron, David R. Richeson
N 1992 Arctic Schoolteacher: Kulukak, Alaska, 1931-1933 Abbie Morgan Madenwald
N 1997 This Distant and Unsurveyed Country: A Woman's Winter at Baffin Island, 1857-1858 W Gillies Ross
N 1999 Under Polaris: An Arctic Quest Tahoe Talbot Washburn (1938 Arctic Canada)
N 2002 Midnight to the North: The Untold Story of the Inuit Woman Who Saved the Polaris Expedition Sheila Nickerson
N 2003 Ada Blackjack - A True Story of Survival in the Arctic Jennifer Niven
N 2004 Alaska's Daughter: An Eskimo Memoir of the Early Twentieth Century Elizabeth Pinson
N 2004 A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador Mina Benson Hubbard (orig. pub. in 1908; edited and with a new introduction by Sherrill E. Grace)
S 2004 Antarctica's First Lady: Memoirs of the First American Woman to Set Foot on the Antarctic Continent and Winter-Over as a Member of a Pioneering Expedition Edith M Ronne
N 2005 Prisoners of the North: Portraits of Five Arctic Immortals Pierre Berton, includes Lady Jane Franklin
N 2005 Flowers in the Snow: The Life of Isobel Wylie Hutchison by Gwyneth Hoyle, (Scottish woman explored Arctic circle 1927-1936)
N 2006 Inuit Entertainers in the United States Jim Zwick (incl the `Eskimo Twin Girls')
N 2013 Taming the Arctic: The 20th Century Renown Explorer--Louise Arner Boyd Durlynn Anema
N 2017 The Polar Adventures of a Rich American Dame: A Life of Louise Arner Boyd Joanna Kafarowski (organized and directed 7 Arctic expeditions 1926-55)
N 2021 A Line of Driftwood: The Ada Blackjack Story Diane Glancy (based on Blackjack’s diary)
S 2022 Antarctic Pioneer: The Trailblazing Life of Jackie Ronne Joanna Kafarowski