Reviewing anthologies will always be difficult. Everyone can come up with their own selection of pieces in any field in which they are expert so why is this particular selection better or worse than one I might have compiled? In fact this anthology has several very positive features. The first thing to say is that Rebecca Priestley had the idea and did something about it. There are plenty of anthologies of heroic narratives but this is the first I have come across that aims to focus on science rather than exploring and adventure. The second positive feature is that she persuaded the publisher to allow her enough pages to make the extracts valuable, allowing the style and voice of the writer to come though. And the third is her flexible approach using not only the original books but also blogs, popular science articles and poems, as well as commissioning a few articles on topics she felt needed to be included.
She has assembled the 48 prose extracts and the poems (from six poets) into four sections – Unknown land, The first Antarcticans, Continent for science and Global barometer – each with a short introduction in bold type. She also contributed a 10 page introduction to the volume explaining its origins and her own experience of being in Antarctica as a writer with the New Zealand national programme. There are some small errors I noted, especially on page xxv where she intimates that there were no stations in Antarctica before IGY when of course the British, Argentine, Chilean, French and Australian had already been established. She also says that the Antarctic Treaty was signed in 1961 when it was actually signed in 1959 and ratified in 1961. Whilst Bellinghausen is referred to as a German he was born to what are known as Baltic Germans in what is now Estonia and then was Russian, and De Gerlache was suffering from depression as well as scurvy which undermined his control of Belgica. But these are minor comments given the high quality of the proof reading for the many transcribed extracts in the volume.
Many of the pieces will be familiar to readers of Polar Record as they come from the classic accounts but even they may not immediately recognise the selections from the expeditions of Scott and Shackleton where the extracts are from the science appendices rather than the main text. But even for this well-read audience there will be things they have missed like Rhian Salmon on her days at Halley, Graham Turbot on seals, Robin Bell on the Gamburtsev Mountains and Kathryn Smith on the invasion of the King Crabs to name just some. The compiler has tried to choose a range of topics – meteorites, katabatic winds, penguins, seals, geology, icebergs, ozone hole, meteorology, balloon ascent, etc – to give a broad feel for science and in that respect I think that her inclusion of some of the exploration narratives like James Cook, Frederick Cook, Leopold McClintock, and even Joseph Dubouzet does not help the focus. If these early expeditions needed to be included then we should be hearing from the scientists/naturalists about science and not the expedition leaders.
If it were my selection then I would have included pieces from Mawson whose enthusiasm for Antarctic geology was palpable, from Charcot’ scientists looking for insects and mosses on the Antarctic Peninsula, and perhaps from Tom Bagshawe whose expedition achieved the first detailed life cycle of the Gentoo penguin whilst living under an upturned boat. Instead of Cook I would have included something more scientific from his naturalists, the Forsters. And whilst we have Rob Dunbar's blog on drilling from Joindes Resolution there is nothing from the thousands of scientists who have investigated the oceanography and biology of the Southern Ocean on ships from many nations as whale scientists, marine biologists and oceanographers. There is not much poetry I am aware of specifically on science and that is clear in the compiler's choices which encompass Chris Orsman's The polar captain's wife to Ashleigh Young's Small fry. Given that limitation I thought she might have wanted to include something from The rime of the ancient mariner (surely the best know poem on Antarctica) and maybe a poem from Jean McNeill who has spent two summers with scientists in Antarctica.
Perhaps she has been unduly generous to New Zealand authors (which includes most of the poetry) but the book is published in New Zealand and needs to appeal to the local audience. But these are only the sort of comments that every anthology compiler must expect! And whilst proposing other authors and topics I would not want to suggest that this book will not achieve its primary aim – to highlight the contribution scientists have made and are making to understanding Antarctica and explaining it to the public in simple and engaging accounts. This is a book for dipping into so surely, with our apparently reduced attention spans in the 21st century, an ideal volume for the younger generations?
The author includes a useful glossary to cover some of the technical terms in the extracts, and a well constructed index. The list of sources would have been more valuable if she had added details of the more recent editions of many of the books used. That way the reader would stand a reasonable chance of finding the book unlike the first editions of Captain Cook or Cherry-Garrard! Overall a welcome addition to the literature.
