Anthropological and ethnological works by Asen Balikci, Franz Boas, Jean Malaurie, Samuel Morton, Richard Nelson, Gontran de Poncins, and Knud Rasmussen; William Elder’s Biography of Elisha Kent Kane; Matthew Maury’s The Physical Geography of the Sea; William Rhees’s An Account of The Smithsonian Institution, Its Founder, Building, Operations, Etc.; W. J. Holland’s Taxidermy and Zoological Collecting; and George Glidden and J. C. Nott’s Types of Mankind provided other useful background. Stephen Jay Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man steered me toward the work of Nott and Glidden; William Goetzmann’s New Lands, New Men: America and the Second Great Age of Discovery provided initial information about the Exploring Expedition. The lines Erasmus Wells remembers his father reading to him are paraphrased from Pliny the Elder’s Natural History.
I’m indebted to the Macdowell Colony, where I wrote the first lines of this novel; and to the Guggenheim Foundation, for a fellowship that enabled me to complete it. My thanks as well to Dave Reid, Charlie Innuaraq, Mathias Qaunaq, Limach Kadloo, and Joelie Aulaqiak of Pond Inlet, for showing me the beauties of the floe edge. Douglas M. Orr Jr. introduced me to the ballad “Lady Franklin’s Lament”; Mark Sawin, of the University of Texas at Austin, shared with me both the bibliography of his research into the life of Elisha Kent Kane and his excellent master’s thesis, “Raising Kane: The Making of a Hero, the Marketing of a Celebrity” (1997).
Wendy Weil and Carol Houck Smith offered constant support and the best kind of criticism; their help was invaluable. Peter Landesman’s thorough, perceptive comments guided me through the final draft. Without Margot Livesey, who was with me throughout the entire voyage, there would have been, as always, no book at all: my deepest thanks.
NOTE ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS
The decorations at the beginning of each section and chapter are copies of engravings from G. Hartwig’s The Polar and Tropical Worlds and from W. J. Holland’s Taxidermy and Zoological Collecting. The two-page advertisement for Dr. Kane’s Arctic Explorations in the chapter “Toodlamik, Skin and Bones” is reproduced from William Elder’s Biography of Elisha Kent Kane. The engraving on the title page is from Francis McClintock’s The Voyage of the Fox in the Arctic Seas.
Copyright
Copyright © 1998 by Andrea Barrett
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
First Edition
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Barrett, Andrea.
The voyage of the Narwhal : a novel / Andrea Barrett.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-393-04632-X
ISBN 978-0-393-34721-0 (e-book)
I. Title.
PS3552.A7327V6 1998
813′.54—dc21 98-11246
CIP
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110
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W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., 10 Coptic Street, London WC1A 1PU
ALSO BY ANDREA BARRETT
Ship Fever
The Forms of Water
The Middle Kingdom
Secret Harmonies
Lucid Stars
Voyage of the Narwhal Page 37