Volume 8, 1955 - The Arctic Circle - Home

VOL. YIn NO.3THE ARCTIC CIRCULAR7to the public by purchase, at the lowest possible price at whichthey can be furnished •••" The final details with regards toprinting and prices were settled in May 1837. with which publiccirculation of Parliamentary Papers was finally established' 1J0nes.1904, pp. v-vii).Arctic FapersThe Arctic Fapers located to date by the writer number 47,all of which have been referred in the bibliography to the SessionalPapers of the House of Commons) Command Fapers form only30 per cent of the numerical total, but comprise 79 per cent of the4. 300.page bulk of all Arctic Papers.Despite the reverence in which these papers are held bysome authorities. there is at least one exception amongst them.Lieut. Commander R. T. Gould 2 • R.N •• has written of the ArcticBlue Books as follows: "They are a most si~ular collection. Acomplete set !Le., of the Arctic Blue Books/would rival in bulkthe four Shak~peare Folios, and contain ev;"n more words. of allkinds, than the minutes of the Royal Oak court-martial (happilyleft unprinted). Nothing like selection appears to have been attempted-- every scrap of paper that found its way into officialchannels, from the most valuable hydrographic and other informationdown to begging letters and mediumistic ravings, was sure to beeast up in one of these Blue-books. in an order partly chronological,largely fortuitous. and, as a whole I defying analysis. In manycases the Blue-books must now be regarded as the best procurableauthorities, the original documents from which they were compiledbeing no longer extant -- but they are by no means easy reading,and probably never were, even in their heyday. widely read"(Gould, 1928, p. 87).-IL References to Arctic Expeditions occur in the Journals of bothHouses, but the entries there are brief, and generally seemmore concerned with the mechanics of Farliamentary procedure.Arctic references in the Journals have not been included in thebi bliography below.2. Gould, R.T.l928. 'Oddities: a book of unexplained factsI.London: Phillip Allan, 336 pp.