Post submitted by Russell Potter, a contributor to the development of the Arctic Visions exhibition and this microsite. He teaches at Rhode Island College, where he is editor of the Arctic Book Review. His books include Arctic Spectacles: The Frozen North in Visual Culture, 1818-1875 (2007), and most recently a novel, Pyg: The Memoirs of a Learned Pig (2011). The distinctive scrapbook employed… Continue reading Bradford’s “Mark Twain” Scrapbook
Category: Bradford Scrapbooks
After Icebergs with a Painter: An Inspiration for Bradford’s 1869 Voyage
POSTED BY JOANNE SEYMOUR In Arctic Regions, William Bradford chronicled his 1869 voyage to the Arctic along Greenland’s coast, & cites two books that initially inspired his exploration for art’s sake: Lord Dufferin’s Letters from High Places and Elisha Kent Kane’s Arctic Explorations in the years of 1853, ’54, ’55. At least one other book… Continue reading After Icebergs with a Painter: An Inspiration for Bradford’s 1869 Voyage
Charles Francis Hall
POSTED BY RUSSELL POTTER Charles Francis Hall may well have been the most passionate — and most peculiar — of all nineteenth-century Arctic explorers. He was not born to the sea — in fact, for the first half of his life, he was an ordinary man, a businessman, a family man firmly secured to the… Continue reading Charles Francis Hall
Francis Russell Nixon
POSTED BY RUSSELL POTTER Anglican Bishop Francis Russell Nixon is among the more singular signatories in William Bradford’s studio scrapbook. Had he only his brilliant academic career and subsequent rise in the church, he would already have been noteworthy, but what makes him even more significant in this instance is his early passion for the… Continue reading Francis Russell Nixon
Edward Augustus Inglefield
POSTED BY RUSSELL POTTER Perhaps the most significant of all the signatures in the Bradford scrapbooks is that of Captain (and later Admiral) Edward Augustus Inglefield — not only because Inglefield was the commander of three Arctic expeditions involved in the Franklin search, but because he was also a pioneering Arctic photographer — quite possibly the very… Continue reading Edward Augustus Inglefield
Lady Jane Franklin
POSTED BY RUSSELL A. POTTER Among the most notable signatures in William Bradford’s scrapbook is that of Lady Jane Franklin, the second wife of Sir John Franklin, a woman of indominable will and spirit, who through her efforts to find traces of her husband’s lost Arctic expedition, became the sponsor of several, and the inspiration… Continue reading Lady Jane Franklin
Wilkie Collins
POSTED BY RUSSELL POTTER Among the more illustrious names found in the Bradford scrapbooks is that of the novelist and playwright Wilkie Collins (1824-1889). Collins, a close friend and protégé of Charles Dickens, was perhaps best known for his novel The Woman in White, which helped launch the genre of “sensation” fiction — fiction which included murders,… Continue reading Wilkie Collins
