Reviews

Because it was explored relatively later than the Arctic, the southern continent has had a shifting, fluid existence for writers, figuring variously as utopia, laboratory, or site of lost races. [...]inevitably, substantial parts of each chapter can only mention individual works in passing. The answer is Dickens and poetry anthologies, among other works. [...]they even set up newsletters like the South Polar Times and engaged in theatricals, sometimes performing their own works. Both studies have their respective strengths, not least their joint demonstration of how extensive ways of imagining Antarctica have been. Because they are, of necessity, so selective, they also point up the need for a substantial historical survey of this material.