News at the Ends of the Earth: the print culture of polar exploration

The news from the ends of the Earth is rarely good at present. Warming waters, retreating sea ice, endangered and invasive species, runaway glaciers and disintegrating ice shelves are what we have come to expect in daily headlines about the polar regions. With the Arctic and Antarctic so central to the climate crisis, a book about the printed ephemera of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Anglo-American polar expeditions might seem out of step with current concerns. In News at the Ends of the Earth, Hester Blum aims to turn this perception on its head, arguing that these seemingly quirky textual artefacts have much to teach us about our own survival in a period characterised by climate extremes and accelerated environmental change.