Lady Franklin's Revenge - Hardcover

McGoogan, Ken

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593052757 ISBN 13: 9780593052754

Publisher: Bantam Press, 2006

Synopsis

Born into a wealthy London family in late-eighteenth-century England, Jane Griffin enjoyed nothing like the opportunities available to men of her class. And yet she became a world traveller, ranging far off the beaten path of Grand-Tour Europe to explore Russia, Greece, the Holy Land and northern Africa. She rode a donkey into Nazareth, sailed a rat-infested boat up the Nile River, and, at age of seventy, circumnavigated the globe in rough sailing ships. Jane married Captain John Franklin at thirty-six. She helped him seize the opportunity of a lifetime - leadership of a Royal Navy expedition destined, supposedly, to solve the final riddle of the Northwest Passage. After Franklin disappeared into the Arctic, she badgered the Admiralty into dispatching dozens of ships to locate him; she financed voyages through public subscription, paid for others out of her own pocket, and inspired even the president of the United States to contribute to the search. In 1854, when explorer John Rae returned from the Arctic with news that the final survivors of the Franklin expedition, while starving to death, had degenerated into cannibalism, Jane enlisted the celebrated Charles Dickens to repudiate him. She then sent Leopold McClintock to the area Rae had specified, and he brought back the evidence she sought, exonerating Franklin personally and opening the way to her creation of a legend.

About this title

About the Author

KEN McGOOGAN is a Canadian writer - historian, biographer, novelist and journalist. He is the author of the internationally acclaimed bestseller Fatal Passage about Scottish Arctic adventurer John Rae, which won the Writers' Trust of Canada Drainle-Taylor Biography Prize, the Canadian Authors' Association History Award and the Grant MacEwan Award. It also won a US Christopher Award as a work of artistic excellence that 'affirms the highest values of the human spirit'. He is also the author of the critically acclaimed Ancient Mariner, a biography of the British explorer, Samuel Hearne. The author lives with his family in Toronto, Canada.

From the Inside Flap

Born into a wealthy London family in late-eighteenth-century England, Jane Griffin enjoyed nothing like the opportunities available to men of her class. And yet she became a world traveller, ranging far off the beaten path of Grand-Tour Europe to explore Russia, Greece, the Holy Land and northern Africa. She rode a donkey into Nazareth, sailed a rat-infested boat up the Nile, and, at the age of seventy, circumnavigated the globe in rough sailing ships.

Jane married Captain John Franklin at thirty-six. She helped him seize the opportunity of a lifetime leadership of a Royal Navy expedition destined, supposedly, to solve the final riddle of the Northwest Passage, the fabled shortcut to the Orient across the top of North America. After Franklin disappeared into the Arctic, Jane badgered the Admiralty into dispatching dozens of ships to locate him; she financed voyages through public subscription, paid for others out of her own pocket, and inspired even the president of the United States to contribute to the search.

In 1854, when explorer John Rae returned from the Arctic with news that the final survivors of the Franklin expedition had degenerated into cannibalism in an attempt to avoid starving to death, Jane enlisted Charles Dickens to repudiate him. She then sent Leopold McClintock to the area Rae had specified, and he brought back the evidence she sought, exonerating Franklin personally and opening the way to her creation of a legend.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bantam Press
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0593052757
• ISBN 13: 9780593052754
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 480