I May Be Some Time : Ice and the English Imagination

A cultural history of the human obsession with ice, Eskimos, & polar exploration. When Scott died on his way back from the South Pole, history became a myth embedded in both the public & private imagination. Conventional histories of polar exploration trace the laborious expeditions across the map, but rarely has a writer asked what the explorers thought they were doing, or why they did these seemingly insane things. Spufford reveals a history of feeling buttressed by the call of vast empty spaces & the beauty of untrodden snow, as he pieces together the elements of a myth that still has the power to seduce. Draws on diaries, letters, the works of Bronte, Keats, & others.Spufford, Francis is the author of 'I May Be Some Time : Ice and the English Imagination', published 2002 under ISBN 9780756753504 and ISBN 0756753503.