John Rae is best known today as the first European to reveal the fate of the Franklin Expedition, yet the range of Rae’s accomplishments is much greater. Over five expeditions, Rae mapped some 1,550 miles (2,494 kilometres) of Arctic coastline; he is undoubtedly one of the Arctic’s greatest explorers, yet today his significance is all but lost. John Rae, Arctic Explorer is an annotated version of Rae’s unfinished autobiography. William Barr has extended Rae’s previously unpublished manuscript and completed his story based on Rae’s reports and correspondence—including reaction to his revelations about the Franklin Expedition. Barr’s meticulously researched, long overdue presentation of Rae’s life and legacy is an immensely valuable addition to the literature of Arctic exploration.

John Rae was a Scottish doctor and explorer born on September 30, 1813, in Orkney. As a child, he enjoyed sailing, climbing, hunting, and fishing—skills that would serve him well in his future exploits. In 1833, shortly after graduating from medical school, Rae was appointed surgeon of the Prince of Wales, a Hudson's Bay Company ship bound for Moose Factory, Ontario, where he remained for the next ten years. He had great respect for the peoples native to northern Canada and adopted many of their survival skills. He learned to hunt caribou, store meat, construct shelter, and walk using snowshoes. He was particularly known for this last skill, once walking 1,200 miles in snowshoes through winter forest in order to learn how to survey, earning him the Inuit nickname Aglooka, "he who takes long strides."

Rae embarked on his first expedition in 1846. Over the next decade, he explored much of northern Canada's coastline and, in fact, discovered the final link in the Northwest Passage. However, his achievements have gone largely unrecognized due to the discovery he made in 1854. While exploring the Boothia Peninsula, Rae obtained the first information about the fate of the Franklin expedition, which had been missing since 1845. He met a group Inuit who claimed to have seen the missing men four years earlier. Through their reports, Rae concluded that the last survivors of the Franklin expedition had resorted to cannibalism, before perishing in 1850. Upon his return to England, he was heavily criticized by Franklin's wife, Lady Jane, and the author Charles Dickens, and shunned by the British establishment.

John Rae retired from the Hudson's Bay Company in 1856 but retained his love of exploration. In 1860, he was hired to explore Iceland and Greenland in an effort to establish a telegraph line to America. And in 1884, at the age of seventy-one, he was hired by the HBC to survey another telegraph route, in the west of Canada, from Red River to Victoria.

John Rae died in London on July 22, 1893. He was the only major explorer of his time not to receive a knighthood.

John Rae's profile page

William Barr specializes in geomorphology and has, for the past thirty years, focused his research on the history of Arctic exploration. He has published fourteen books, including translations from German, French, and Russian, and more than a hundred articles. He is author of From Barrow to Boothia: The Arctic Journal of Chief Factor Peter Warren Dease 1836-1839.

William Barr's profile page

• Winner, Scholarly and Academic Book of the Year | Alberta Book Publishing Awards, Book Publishers Association of Alberta

"Barr’s skillful editing of the unfinished autobiography is a meticulous enterprise, based not only on the surviving manuscript but on other primary sources. It’s a book you’ll dip into while anchored somewhere comfortable, evening after evening, entranced by the understated narrative.... This monumental volume is a tribute to a truly remarkable arctic traveler and voyager, whose achievements leave one breathless with admiration. In a way, this 648-page book is a true page-turner, largely because Rae writes so humbly about his extraordinary journeys and carries you with him." Good Old Boat, Vol. 2, No. 7, May 2019 [Full review at https://audioseastories.com/bkr-rae]

Brian Fagan

"Barr is a superb editor and annotator. He links portions of the text together by inserting Rae's correspondence with senior officials in the HBC and the British government. While Rae's manuscript ends on April 15, 1854, Rae expertly relates the final 39 years of the explorer's life in a mere 16 pages.... Impressive is often overused. It should be reserved for works such as this that leave an impression on a reader's mind of the nineteenth century explorers who not only opened up new vistas but wrote about them in words that embody the spirit of adventure that set them loose in the unknown."

Gary C. Stein

"The autobiography breaks off mid-way through his last expedition and in mid-sentence at the bottom of a page.... William Barr edits with self-effacing thoroughness, interpolating passages of correspondence to fill lacunae in the narrative, adding copious notes, and appending mini-biographies of the people who travelled with Rae. Notwithstanding its truncation, the torso of autobiography that remains is an impressive one." Times Literary Supplement, June 14, 2019

Jonathan Dore

"...Barr's editorial work--particularly the extensive and very informative endnotes--deserves high commendation. The volume also contains several excellent maps.... John Rae, Arctic Explorer is a major contribution to the literature of northern exploration."

Janice Cavell

"John Rae...spent ten years as resident physician at Moose Factory. Then, in 1846 he launched his career as an explorer when he participated in a survey of Committee Bay. A year later, he started a six-year search for the missing Franklin Expedition, and finally revealed its tragic fate.... William Barr... has produced a well rounded and important volume about this significant explorer."