This book is superbly dramatic and beautifully readable. A terrific tale of high endeavour and polar peril, this is the story of a scientific expedition to the Arctic in 1855 and the women the explorers left behind.
A brilliant portrait of Victorian society obsessed with mapping and classifying everything under the sun — including the icy Arctic — where the emancipation of women and the evolution of species are the next great revolutions just stirring into life.