Hats off to the folks at Touchwood Editions. They’re launching this new edition of John Rae’s Arctic Correspondence on the same day, September 30, as Rae is to be welcomed into Westminster Abbey. Yes, these are author’s copies. I contributed a Foreword to this edition. While you can pick up a used copy of the original volume for as little as $150 (not a misprint), this paperback lists at $21.95. And for Arctic aficionados, it IS a crucial work that runs 494 pages and presents the clearest of windows into the mind and character of arguably the greatest of all Arctic explorers. But here, from  the Foreword, are quick two paragraphs:

In
March 1860, William Arrowsmith, a member of the Arrowsmith family of mapmakers,
informed McClintock, who was busily proclaiming “his” discovery of the Fate [of Franklin],
that Rae had a prior claim. McClintock wrote to Rae complaining of Arrowsmith’s
tone. Rae defended Arrowsmith and, as I wrote in Fatal Passage, “entered into a protracted, somewhat testy
correspondence, originating the argument . . . that McClintock merely confirmed
and clarified Rae’s findings and that, in future, other searchers would shed
additional light on the fate of the Franklin expedition.”

As Rae
himself wrote, the relics he brought to London “were sufficient evidence that a
large portion of [the men on] both Franklin’s ships had died of disease and
starvation in the neighbourhood of the Back River and King William’s Land on,
or previous to, 1850 and that these were the last survivors of the party . . .
I write in perfect good feeling, as I hope people may do in a matter of opinion
on a subject where there always will be two
sides of the question, perhaps three,
were another expedition to go out and find the journal of some of the latest
survivors.”

Where can you get this book? Lots of bookstores. Or, for example, click here.