Author Description

A scene so wildly and awfully desolate...it cannot fail to impress me with gloomy thoughts' - so Scott perceived the stark Antarctic landscape in 1905. Ice and isolation dominate the experiences of the Antarctic explorer and find voice in literary interpretation. Yet places are more than physical appearance; expectation and subjective response, as much as direct stimuli, play a part in perceptions of the environment. Antarctica traces images of the continent from early invented maps of Terra Australis Incognita up to Amundsen's arrival at 90 degrees South. Approaching Antarctica from sea and then land, Paul Simpson-Housley describes differing perceptions created by inadequate instrumentation, longitudinal errors, mirage and desire. Explorers returned with images of both beauty and terror. He also analyses their writings in diaries, books and poetry. Developing this theme, and focusing on the realist paintings of Edward Wilson and the symbolic poetry of Coleridge, he discusses how artistic images were created from first-hand experience of the landscape as well as contemporary report and literature.