The image of exploration in the nineteenth century was laden with multiple meanings, and sustained by a rapidly expanding visual culture. In theatres, in art, in verse and song, the achievements of explorers were performed before the public, circulated, promoted, celebrated, and manipulated, whilst explorers themselves became, willingly or otherwise, the subjects of huge attention. Exploration was theatre, a spectacular peacetime engagement, and its representation a series of performances: the idea of whether an expedition was successful or not, depended as much upon what was imagined to have happened as to what actually occurred. Huw Lewis-Jones engaging work explores the making of such polar heroes. It describes how and why a cult of polar exploration was constructed and developed in the nineteenth century, examining the diverse ways that heroes were imagined. It's also a story of how the boundaries of the known world were pushed back as blanks were filled on the charts of the north. Skryť popis