From Exploration to Publication: The Evolution of a 19th-Century Arctic Narrative

Abstract

Relations between explorers of early Canada and their English publishers are sufficiently complex as to call into question the customary straightforward equation that readers draw between explorers' eyewitness experiences and the narrative account of them, issued some time after their return to England. Captain Cook's first published narrative is the notorious case in point. Narratives of exploration played important roles in the establishment of imperial claims. The case of the publishing house of John Murray, good friend of Sir John Barrow, Second Secretary to the Admiralty for much of the early 19th century, offers an examination of much of the discursive shaping of the Canadian Arctic during the British Navy's search for a Northwest Passage. Archival materials pertaining to two of Murray's books, from John Franklin's first Arctic Land Expedition (1819-22) and from George Back's voyage to Hudson Bay (1836-37), place on view the process by which narratives of exploration evolved through the authorization of them by the Admiralty (Sir John Barrow) and the preparation of them by a publisher (John Murray) into published commodities.

Travels into print: authoring, editing and narratives of travel and exploration,c.1815–c.1857

“…John Murray edited in part to put the facts of travel into better narrative sequence. This is clear in his emendation of George Back’s polar narratives in the 1830s (MacLaren 1994). Back was anxious to get into authorised print an account of what, in effect, had been a failed mission, at least in terms of its end in view (which had been to survey and explore northern Canada).…”

“…Journal accounts of voyages of oceanic navigation in the late eighteenth century, for example, had to make a further ‘voyage into print’ (Bourguet 1997) to become published narratives, yet many often did so only after the mediation of others and then in abridged or amended form. Publishers acting as editors could and did alter their authors’ works in order to serve different demands: to ensure that the printed rendition of Arctic exploration give greater weight to the arduousness of the task even though the explorer‐author had played down such matters (MacLaren 1994); or, of Pacific travel accounts, by altering the content of different editions to represent indigenous populations in specific ways (MacLaren 2003); or meeting perceptions of audience expectations by amending the author’s intentions as Blackwood did of John Hanning Speke (Finkelstein 2002).…”

Off the beaten track? Critical approaches to exploration studies

“…Adriana Craciun (2016; has argued that the ways in which a traveller represented their expedition in print were central to both the authenticity of their findings and their status as an explorer (see also Withers, 1999;Withers, 2004;MacLaren, 1994;MacLaren, 2011;Jones, 2005;Shapin, 1994). As Kennedy (2013, p. 2) explains, an explorer's search for new information was often "made problematic by the conditions of its production."…”

Geographies of the Book: Review and Prospect

“…Books of travel were packaged and were transportable representations of geographical knowledge, but their written content was never an unproblematic statement of fact. Historians of the book and geographers interested in the making of travel texts have shown how authorial strategies and practices of editorial mediation combined to shape both style and substance in particular ways (Cavell , ; Craciun , ; MacLaren , , , ; Withers & Keighren ). Travellers and their publishers—keen to assure readers of the truth of what was written—employed a variety of occasionally contradictory approaches to demonstrate the credibility and authority of texts and their authors (Keighren & Withers ).…”