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[books 2012] Lady Franklin's Revenge
Apr. 8th, 2012 04:36 pm20. Lady Franklin's Revenge by Ken McGoogan
I picked this up in a charity shop a while ago. The blurb on the back makes it sound like the whole thing is about the efforts of Sir John Franklin's wife to find out what happened to his lost expedition to find the North West Passage.
Actually, it's a biography of her whole life, and the search for Franklin only occupies the last quarter.
Having said that, it's pretty interesting and non-challenging. Jane Griffin (later Franklin) did lead a really interesting life and travelled extensively throughout. She and her husband are important figures in the history of Tasmania as well.
As anyone who knows anything about Arctic exploration knows, Franklin was an idiot and his wife is both a villain and a huge influence on Arctic exploration. A huge influence because the expeditions she insisted on the Admiralty sending out, or financed herself, charted 1700 miles of the Canadian Arctic coast. But she's the villain because she ruined John Rae, the man who discovered what happened to the Franklin expedition and who did indeed discover the North West Passage, because he reported that the last survivors resorted to cannibalism (this has since been proved to be true). She then systematically set about making the myth that Franklin did discover the North West Passage, a lie people still believe to this day.
I'll probably read his other two books - one on John Rae, and the other on Samuel Hearne, whose primary source account of the journey to the Arctic Ocean at the mouth of the Coppermine River I read recently.
I picked this up in a charity shop a while ago. The blurb on the back makes it sound like the whole thing is about the efforts of Sir John Franklin's wife to find out what happened to his lost expedition to find the North West Passage.
Actually, it's a biography of her whole life, and the search for Franklin only occupies the last quarter.
Having said that, it's pretty interesting and non-challenging. Jane Griffin (later Franklin) did lead a really interesting life and travelled extensively throughout. She and her husband are important figures in the history of Tasmania as well.
As anyone who knows anything about Arctic exploration knows, Franklin was an idiot and his wife is both a villain and a huge influence on Arctic exploration. A huge influence because the expeditions she insisted on the Admiralty sending out, or financed herself, charted 1700 miles of the Canadian Arctic coast. But she's the villain because she ruined John Rae, the man who discovered what happened to the Franklin expedition and who did indeed discover the North West Passage, because he reported that the last survivors resorted to cannibalism (this has since been proved to be true). She then systematically set about making the myth that Franklin did discover the North West Passage, a lie people still believe to this day.
I'll probably read his other two books - one on John Rae, and the other on Samuel Hearne, whose primary source account of the journey to the Arctic Ocean at the mouth of the Coppermine River I read recently.
