Ebook: This Distant and Unsurveyed Country: A Woman's Winter at Baffin Island, 1857-1858

In 1857 Margaret Penny set off from Aberdeen, Scotland, with her husband, Captain William Penny, aboard the whaler Lady Franklin on a wintering voyage to what is now the eastern Canadian Arctic. Wives of British captains rarely sailed with their husbands and Margaret Penny was one of the few women to break with tradition, becoming the first European woman to winter at Baffin Island. Incorporating the journal she kept during the expedition with commentary by W. Gillies Ross, This Distant and Unsurveyed Country recreates nineteenth-century Baffin Island for the modern reader and provides a unique perspective on arctic whaling, the Canadian Arctic, and the interaction between Inuit and European culture at the time of the voyage.