HISTORY or HIS/STORY?
THE EXPLORER CUM AUTHOR

R. Davis

In 1965, Northrop Frye proclaimed in his well-known "Conclusion" to The Literary History of Canada that the writings of the early explorers in Canada "are as innocent of literary intention as a mating loon" (Frye 822). In his disn-dssal of these writings that lay outside the "orthodox genres of poetry and fiction" (822), Frye articulated a prevalent colonial attitude about literature. Curiously, in that same volume appeared Victor Hopwood's recognition that the literature of exploration was an important proto-form of Canada's literary experience (Hopwood 19). In the decades that have passed since Frye's pronouncement, readers of Canadian literature seem to have taken more guidance from Hopwood's observation than from Frye's, if one can judge from the work of Jack Warwick, Germaine Warkentin, R.H. Cockburn, I.S. MacLaren, T.D. MacLulich, Barbara Belyea, and a few others. Collectively, the recent work of these scholars demonstrates clearly that explorers were not so innocent in their literary intention as Frye suggests.

Perhaps even more important than the question of authorial intent of the explorers is the subsequent revision of Canada's literary history that has come about since Frye's 1965 "Conclusion." By realizing that the first stage of literary development does not necessarily involve poets and novelists, but that it evolves wherever language is used to articulate experience, the extreme limitations of such notions as the "garrison mentality" and "survival"--for many years accepted as Canada's cultural equivalents of the American "frontier"--can be understood. For those cultural tags suit only a highly selective canon of "orthodox genres of poetry and fiction." Perhaps as a result of this realization about Canada's literary beginnings and of the recent attention given to exploration writing, many of today's an thologies of Canadian literature include excerpts from exploration narratives, providing students with much-needed new perspectives.

Encouraged by the notion that one might better understand Canada's early literature by looking at some of the initial attempts to capture the experience of Canada in words, although not necessarily in the form of the poem or the novel, I have been editing the journals that Sir John Franklin kept during his two land expeditions to the northwest coast of America in 1819-22 and 1825-27. Most readers familiar with these expeditions know of them through Franklin's two public accounts, Narrative of a journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea (1823) and Narrative of a Second Expedition to the Shores of the Polar Sea (1828), rather than through the journals on which the public narratives are based.¹

While much of anthropological, geographical, and historical interest has been garnered from Franklin's written accounts, the idea of considering Franklin's--or any other explorer's--records as intentionally created literary documents has only recently surfaced. Influenced by this post-Frygian perspective, I am interested in the conscious process of authoring in which Franklin engaged when he adapted the journals into public narratives. More specifically, my concern with Franklin's authoring lies in the ways in which the texts have been altered to accommodate--not the subject matter--but the audience. Here, in this paper, I explore the possibility that Franklin more consciously manipulated the telling of the events in the 1825-27 expedition narrative than he did in the account of the 1819-22 expedition, a manipulation that was a deliberate effort to win the favour of his audience.

While modern educated readers question the authority of "history," pointing to the unavoidable colonizing effect of the culture that "writes" it, nineteenth-century British popular readers approached the accounts quite differently Franklin published his popular accounts of his experiences soon after he returned to England at the close of each expedition, and these narrative accounts seem to have been accepted as impartial and unbiased assessments of experience. Never conceived as fictions, Franklin's public words were granted credibility as historical fact. Something of the nineteenth-century's blind acceptance of Franklin's public narrative still lingers, perhaps shored up by very practical concerns: Franklin's hand is so difficult that the journals are nearly inaccessible, and should readers persevere with them, they will quickly realize that the journal accounts run generally parallel to the public narrative. In fact, these more pragmatic reasons probably explain why Franklin's journals remain in holograph manuscript 160 years after they were written, while the journals of most of Franklin's subordinate officers--John Richardson, George Back, Robert Hood--which were never revised into public narratives, have been or are being published (Houston A74,1984).

Yet in spite of the marked similarities between Franklin's journals and his narratives, careful scrutiny reveals subtle but significant changes as the targeted audience shifts from a few select Admiralty officials to the larger reading public. Interestingly, however, in composing the public account from his field journal of the 1819-22 expedition, Franklin did not make nearly as many authorial alterations as he did when he wrote up the public account of his 1825-27 expedition, even though it is obvious he kept a close eye on the field journals during the composition of both narratives. While a full discussion of the changes from private to public accounts is impossible in the space here, a brief survey of variations that are detailed elsewhere (Davis, 1987 and 1989) will demonstrate the level of conscious authoring that went into the production of the second expedition narrative.

First, Franklin's perception of his surroundings as "landscape" seems to have been added to the narrative, a similar aesthetic appreciation of scenery being generally absent from the journal's more empirical account of new lands. The perception of landscape that appears in the narrative, then, was not a condition of Franklin's own visual and cultural conditioning, but was a conscious effort to fulfill the expectations of his audience.² Second, the public narrative of the 1825-27 expedition portrays a darker and more condemning portrait of both Indians and Inuit than what appears in the journal. This is especially surprising because Copper Indians had saved Franklin's life only a few years previously, when disaster struck the Coppermine expedition while on its final leg. My intent here is to construct an explanation for these changes to the 1825-27 accounts, and to question why similar changes were never made to the 1819-22 expedition account.

This article puts forth one possible explanation why changes were made to the 1825-27 but not to the 1819-22 expedition accounts. I suggest that because of the enormous success of the public narrative of the 1819-22 expedition, and because the events of the 1825-27 expedition bore little of the excitement and adventure that carried the day for the earlier account, Franklin felt himself forced into conscious authoring, rather than be content with the more objective reporting with which he felt most comfortable (and, incidentally, which most readers seemed to expect of explorers). This explanation for why Franklin distorted the popular account from the more immediate response he made in his journals of the second land expedition is based on the publishing history of Franklin's two public narratives and on unpublished correspondence between Franklin and his close friend and fellow explorer, John Richardson.

Before embarking on what will seem to some as an arcane investigation of Franklin's publishing history, it n-dght be useful to consider some theoretical relationships between the genres of journal and narrative. Arthur Ponsonby makes some helpful distinctions between the "diary" and the "autobiography" in his book English Diaries, and while a great deal of extrapolation is essential to relate his discussion to the genres of "journal" and "narrative," his work provides a useful starting point. The autobiography, he tells us, is distinct from the diary in that it is composed with publication in mind, while the diary is a private document. Publication, of course, assumes an audience willing to pay for an opportunity to read the account, and this distinction is also true of differences between the journal and the public narrative. Ponsonby goes on to set "letters" apart from "diaries" in that they are written by an author who is fully aware of an immediate recipient, a circumstance that "exercises a restraint on the author and produces a certain sort of self-consciousness which may be entirely absent from the pages of a diary... Letters may be said to have two parents, the writer and the' recipient. Diaries have only one" (Ponsonby 2).

Here we must be cautious. Franklin's "journal" is not to be mistaken for a "diary," at least in the sense Ponsonby uses the term. Rather, Franklin's journals (similar to Ponsonby's "letters") were written with a specific recipient in mind--the British Admiralty. All officers were required to keep daily records--much akin to a ship's log--of navigational and climatic data and of noteworthy events. Unlike the diary, the naval journal was not a repository for private reflections and sentiments of the author. Hence, Franklin's journal, to use Ponsonby's metaphor, has two parents, and the consequent restraint of audience is felt. This restraint, however, is not unique to the journal, but continues to exert itself in the public narrative, because the Admiralty carefully scrutinized both journal and narrative (Gell, Franklin to Richardson, 24 October 1822). This tells us, then, that because the Admiralty's restraint existed in both journal and narrative, the alterations in the narrative can be generally attributed to the demands of the popular reader, although one must accept the troublesome possibility that the Admiralty might further restrain the public account of the expedition.

At any rate, the role of audience as a shaping force in the accounts--whether journal or narrative--cannot be avoided. There can be no "pure" account of exploration, no unfettered expression of the discoverer's responses, but only a series of poses in which the author permits himself to be viewed by his audience. But these are theoretical issues far from Franklin's rather pragmatic and innocent mind. Not happy with the role of author (see discussion on page 18), Franklin tried to avoid its responsibilities, preferring instead an impersonal, subjectivity-eschewing form of accounting for what he experienced. With these observations in mind, let us return to the question of why, then, Franklin would have altered his public account of the 1825-27 expedition.

While the two land journeys were clearly "sister" expeditions attempting to survey the northern coast between Icy Cape and Point Turnagain, the public reception of them was remarkably polarized. On the one hand, the public account of the first expedition, Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea (1823), ran to four British editions in less than 18 months, came out in German, French and American editions by 1824, and appeared a fifth and sixth time in England before the end of the decade, as companion editions with the narrative of the second expedition. On the other hand, the public account of the second expedition, Narrative of a Second Expedition to the Shores of the Polar Sea (1828), was published only once by itself in England and once in the United States. The only other appearances it made in England during Franklin's lifetime were the two editions in 1828 and 1829 that piggy-backed "a brief account of the second journey" onto the best-selling account of the first (National Union 195-96).

The relative success of these public narratives is closely tied to the history of the sister expeditions. On the initial journey, Franklin lost over half his party to starvation and hypothermia. Those who survived were reduced to eating moss, footwear, putrid skins, carrion, and possibly even the flesh of one of their own company. It is likely that midshipman Robert Hood was murdered; it is clear that Dr. Richardson took it upon himself to shoot in the head one of the voyageurs whom he suspected of Hood's murder and of cannibalism. These were the sad results of the Admiralty's first attempt to send naval personnel overland on an ill-prepared undertaking to explore the unknown coast to the eastward of the Coppermine River. The venture itself was bold, requiring that military discipline be expected of Canadian voyageurs, anticipating reliable assistance from Indian bands essentially unknown to the Admiralty, and relying on supplies from poorly-stocked trading posts at the height of rivalry between the feuding Hudson Bay and Northwest companies.

In complete antithesis, the second expedition was carefully planned years in advance. Even though the rivalry between the fur companies had ended, the exploratory party took its own provision. And with the exception of two Inuit interpreters, the party consisted exclusively of hand-picked marine and naval personnel. In consequence of these preparations, no one suffered unduly from cold or hunger. All this planning eliminated the anxiety and sympathy excited in the public by the previous expedition, but in spite of the superior preparations, Franklin's branch of the undertaking charted less terra incognita than had been explored in the summer of 1821. Instead of pushing westward as far as Icy Cape to meet up with Captain Beechey, who had sailed through the Bering Straits, Franklin's men spent much of their time cautiously sitting on~shore waiting for the wind to blow the ice-pack out to sea, thereby creating a navigable passage. Sharply cognizant of the disaster that accompanied the tardy retreat of the previous expedition, Franklin understandably ordered his men to retrace their steps before they had accomplished their goal. And if these events did not fall sufficiently short of the British ideal of heroism, the results of this uneventful survey proved the coast too shallow to allow navigation by large sailing vessels stocked with trade goods, news that did not bode well for Britain's desire to stem the active trade the Russians were conducting from Alaska. In short, the events and accomplishments of the 1825-27 expedition bore nothing of the intrinsic human interest of the first. Perhaps John Franklin knew this better than anyone else. These comparatively mundane events n-dght well have been sufficient temptation for Franklin to embellish his second narrative if he had any desire to continue the celebrity status his 1819-22 adventure had earned him.

If the rather distinct events that transpired on these two expeditions were not in themselves sufficient encouragement to embellish the 1825-27 narrative, the advanced publicity that the publication of his 1819-22 narrative received surely tipped the balance. Franklin's first. expedition met its disastrous climax while returning to Fort Enterprise in the late summer of 1821. Reports of the disaster, however, reached England long before Franklin--who was forced to recuperate in Rupert's Land for months before he was able to make the long journey back to Hudson Bay--could return to England in October of 1822 (Owen 96). During this time, newspapers ran stories about "the man who ate his boots," the rumour-mill flourished, and all varieties of unfounded stories ran rampant in the public press (Gell, Franklin to sister Elizabeth Sellwood, 10 October 1822). Franklin's eventual landing in Great Britain fanned public excitement to an even greater intensity, which was already flaming vigorously. Nevertheless, months passed before Franklin's first-person account of that disastrous adventure could be published, creating a set of circumstances that must have been a bookseller's delight.

In fact, publisher John Murray was eager to contract with Franklin for the publication of his narrative (Gell, Franklin to Richardson, 24 October 1822). And one does one need to be shrewd in business in order to comprehend Murray's interest. John Barrow, Second Secretary to the Admiralty, not only made the initial contact with Murray's firm, but told him that Franklin's journal was "the most painfully interesting of any he had ever read" (Gell, Franklin to Richardson, 24 October 1822), and as Second Secretary to the Admiralty, Barrow would have read many. No wonder that Franklin later remarked to Jane Griffin, who was to become Lady Jane Franklin, that the first edition was selling for ten guineas³ a copy, a sum roughly equal to the salary Franklin would earn in one month during his tenure as Governor of Van Dieman's Land (the modem state of Tasmania, Australia) in the next decade.

A more detailed scrutiny of the first narrative's publishing history makes clear that sales of the book seem to have far surpassed even the optimistic projections of Murray, an astute publisher whose family's firm still flourishes in London. The first edition of A Journey to the Polar Sea took the form of a single-volume quarto. To judge from correspondence between Franklin and Richardson, the volume first appeared in June of 1823 (Gell, Franklin to Richardson, 19 June 1823 and Gell, Franklin to Richardson, October 1824).⁴ Another quarto came out in that same year, and although both bibliographers and antiquarian book dealers commonly refer to this quarto as another "issue" of the first edition, the volume is clearly a separate edition in terms of Carter's definition in ABC for Book Collectors (80-81). Instead, the type used in this later volume has obviously been completely reset, evident in numerous ways: the collations of the two differ significantly, the errata from the first edition have been corrected, the appendix has been expanded, and Franklin's introduction adds new commentary on the Hudson's Bay Company's policy of distributing spirits to native people and to Company servants.⁵ On 15 December 1823, Franklin wrote to Richardson that a "second edition was out" (Gell, Franklin to Richardson), and he was probably referring to this new quarto edition, not to the 1824 two-volume octavo edition that is commonly accepted as the Second Edition of Franklin's narrative (and which was noted as such on the title page). In the Introduction to the second quarto issue/edition, Franklin remarks: "I gladly embrace the opportunity which a second edition affords me" (xiv), even though the title page designates this edition as the first. While I have not been able to ascertain the exact date of publication, Franklin's correspondence with Richardson suggests that the new quarto issue/edition was ready for publication in early October of 1823 (Gell, Franklin to Richardson, 18 October 1823).

A second edition was ready, then, only four months after the first had been released, a fact obscured by normal bibliographic sources. Interestingly, back on 13 June 1823, less than two weeks after the first edition appeared, Franklin remarked to Richardson that he "had heard nothing more about a second edition" from Murray (Gell, emphasis added). Obviously, then, Murray must have spoken of a possible second edition on the very heels of releasing the first. Negotiations between Murray and Franklin show that, initially, no second edition was initially planned. Instead, Franklin was to be paid 500 guineas for the first edition, and only if the book ran to a subsequent edition would he be paid an additional sum (Gell, Franklin to Richardson, 24 October 1822). Other Franklin correspondence shows that he and Richardson were actively preparing a second edition in July and August of 1823, correspondence that is especially significant because it speaks of altering Richardson's account of shooting Michel, the voyageur suspected of murder and cannibalism, in order to squelch any question of impropriety on Richardson's part that might have been ambiguous in the first edition (Gell, Franklin to Richardson, 24 July 1823 and 1 August 1823). These facts attest to Murray's recognition of the need for a second edition almost immediately after releasing the first. At considerable expense, Murray ordered the type reset for a new edition to meet the demands of a market he had underestimated, in spite of his proven business acuity and initial enthusiasm for the narrative. Franklin's public account was proving a best-seller.

The next year, 1824, proved equally active and profitable for Narrative of a Journey, with Murray publishing two further editions of the work, as he had in the previous year. A two-volume octavo edition appeared, noted the "Second Edition" on the title page, and although few changes in the wording or punctuation have been made from the second quarto issue/edition, the new octavo edition is clearly not a cheap reprinting using the quarto edition's type but printed on smaller pages with skimpy margins. It uses an entirely new setting of type, which is the third complete typesetting for this so-called Second Edition of Narrative of a Journey.

The National Union Catalogue cites a Third Edition--another two-volume octavo--in 1824 (National Union 196), but this would actually have been Murray's fourth edition and typesetting of the narrative. Correspondence suggests that this edition came out quite early in that year. A letter of 24 April 1824 speaks of correcting proofs (Gell, Franklin to Richardson), and on 9 June 1824, Franklin remarks that he is sending the third edition to Richardson (Gell, Franklin to Richardson). Because Franklin had used the term "second edition" in reference to the second quarto issue/edition, even though Murray and bibliographers called it the First Edition, one cannot be certain how Franklin is using "third edition" here. Did he mean the formal Third Edition so noted on the title page (which would actually have been the fourth edition with which he and Murray were involved), or did he mean the formal Second Edition? One cannot be certain. At any rate, within the year 1824, Franklin and Murray were working on two separate octavo editions, for while the placement of words on many pages are similar in the two octavo editions, a significant number of pages show different alignments. This would suggest that one octavo edition sold extremely fast, and that Murray once again had to instruct his typesetters to begin work on another. All this evidence argues strongly that while Murray knew his market well and was very optimistic about Franklin's narrative, in 1823 and 1824 he almost constantly had to take on the expense of preparing new editions of Franklin's first expedition narrative in order to satisfy the unexpectedly high demands of the reading public.

Nor should one ignore the many references in Franklin's correspondence to other publishing ventures. On 18 October 1823, Franklin had written to Richardson that 500 copies of the French edition were being printed (Gell). The French edition was published in Paris in 1824. The year previously, a German edition was published in Jena (Travel in Aquatint 575). And in that letter of 9 June 1824 to which I have already referred, Franklin mentions the possibility of adding some engravings of Robert Hood's work to "the new Edition of the Quarto." The plan was abandoned on Barrow's advice that the owners of the original edition might feel cheated, and that because those original volumes "were principally possessions of Libraries and Men of the first distinction in the Country,. . .it would not be wise to give them occasion to be offended." Because the only quarto editions published in Britain were the two published by Murray in 1823, Franklin's 1824 letter evidently refers to yet another quarto, probably the American edition published by C. Carey and I. Lea of Philadelphia in 1824. Without question, Franklin's life would have been very busy during 1823 and 1824, what with correcting proofs of the many editions of his narrative and drawing up plans for his next exploration.

As well as keeping occupied, Franklin was receiving substantial rewards for his authorial efforts. Murray's original offer to Franklin had been the same as his offer to William Edward Parry for publishing rights to his 1819-20 expedition narrative: "500 Guineas at first and if it should go to a Second edition another sum which is not yet stipulated but which in Parry's case amounted to 500 Guineas or pounds more" (Gell, Franklin to Richardson, 24 October 1822). Franklin's earnings from his second edition, however, were not quite as large as Parry's, for a letter fifteen months later to Richardson states that Franklin had been given 170 for his second edition (whether the second 1823 quarto issue/edition or the 1824 octavo Second Edition is ambiguous), and although Franklin grumbles somewhat that Parry had been better served than he had been, he observes that "it was more than I agreed for and I must only look out sharper next time" (Gell, Franklin to Richardson, 10 February 1824).

Franklin goes on to remark that Murray "says that indeed that if it goes to another edition he will make another advance." Further in the letter Franklin admits himself "nevertheless quite satisfied having received 730 instead of 500 guineas as the bargain stated." The figures are quite confused here. Did the payment of 730 cover the quarto First Edition and the subsequent quarto issue/edition? Did it also include payment for the octavo Second Edition, for which Franklin was correcting proofs in April of that year (Gell, Franklin to Richardson, 12 April 1824)? Did the possibility of "another edition" refer to a fourth edition that materialized as the octavo Third Edition? Whatever the case, Franklin expresses his satisfaction with the sum. And if Franklin was satisfied with 730 in February of 1824, he would have been even more content when he received a further 200 guineas from Murray on 12 January 1825, just prior to embarking on his second expedition (Murray Archives, Franklin to Murray, 13 January, 1825).⁶ And note that none of these financial arrangements mention earnings from the French, German, or American editions.

One can easily imagine, then, that between Franklin's activities in 1823 and 1824 with the new editions of his narrative and the considerable profits they generated (remember that 730 represents nearly two-thirds of Franklin's annual salary as Governor in Australia and more than one-third of Mr. Bennett's annual income in Pride and Prejudice, with which he comfortably looked after his wife and five daughters a few decades previously), his appetite to repeat such a success with his 1825-27 narrative would indeed have been be whetted. Yet as has been shown, the less sensational events of the second expedition and the far less enthusiastic reception by his prospective audience, which was likely a consequence of the comparatively mundane events, forced Franklin to think more consciously about creating and composing an account of his journey. Previously, he had been able to rely on the public's eagerness to read a firsthand account of the highly-publicized events, and his task as author required him to do little more than report in an extremely mechanical and official manner what had happened. The 1819-22 narrative was a difficult act to follow; Franklin knew he would have to offer his audience something new.

Certainly the notion of polishing and carefully composing narrative accounts for the public was not at all unusual for British explorers. Alexander Mackenzie's Voyages from Montreal (1801) was actually the creation of its unacknowledged editor, William Combe, a professional writer. Nor is it insignificant that the book was published nearly a decade after the events it described had transpired. Similarly, Samuel Hearne's Journey to the Northern Ocean (1795) was not published until more than two decades after the barrenland crossing it described, and I.S. MacLaren has recently demonstrated some remarkable differences between Hearne's field journal and the published narrative. (MacLaren 1990) David Thompson spent the final five years of his life writing and rewriting a narrative based on his many volumes of journals, but he died before completing the task. These facts make clear that many explorers were conscious of the possibilities of literary manipulation, even if their first interest lay with the primary act of geographical discovery.

The elapsed time between the act of geographical exploration and the appearance of a public account, however, was markedly brief for Franklin. In addition to Franklin's desire to capitalize on public excitement, the Admiralty had hurried him to get the narrative of the 1819-22 expedition into print. Franklin remarked that both John Barrow and John Wilson Crocker, First Secretary to the Admiralty, were "quite hot for an early publication of our journals"⁷ (Gell, Franklin to Richardson, 24 October 1822). Thus, instead of devoting years to preparing an account of his experiences and instead of hiring someone else to write it for him, Franklin relied on the human interest in the disaster that befell his expedition to sell his first narrative.

But when, at the close of his 1825-27 expedition, he was faced with following his earlier publishing successes, he had to weigh more carefully the concerns of audience and rhetoric in composing the account, because the events themselves bore little sensational appeal. Franklin was aware that his telling of the events--not the events themselves--offered the only chance of winning public interest. And while he did not spend years shaping and revising the narrative of the second expedition, as Thompson and Hearne seem to have done with theirs, he did spend several months longer with it than he did with the first expedition's narrative. He seems to have used this time to reshape his narrative as a conscious author, rather than to rely on his journal account that had recorded facts and events of interest to the British Admiralty.

But literary creation was something with which Franklin was neither comfortable nor adept. In a letter of 24 October 1823, he had begged Richardson's assistance in writing the 1819-22 narrative, stating that he did "not feel quite competent to the task of preparing a work for publication (Gell). And in a particularly candid letter to his sister, written from Stromness upon first reaching Great Britain after three years' absence in Rupert's Land, he admitted: "The prospect of having to become an author is by no means gratifying to me, indeed nothing but a sense of duty would prompt me to undertake the task. My objection partly arises from a consciousness of my inability to equal the stile and language of most of the Modern travellers ... I shall feel Willinghams absence very severely. He would I am sure have rendered me every assistance" (Gell, Franklin to sister Elizabeth Sellwood, 10 October 1822). These comments to Richardson and to his sister make clear Franklin's insecurity as an author. In particular, the remark to his sister shows that he equated successful writing with a suitably elevated sensibility and diction--"stile and language"---and that he saw his new role as essentially that of a travel writer, not necessarily that of an Admiralty reporter of uncharted lands.

Interestingly, when Franklin wrote his journal of the 1825-27 expedition, he was so conscious that it would subsequently become the basis for a popular narrative that he sometimes composed the journal as though he were addressing not the Admiralty, but a general audience interested in travel writing. For example, he frequently addresses his audience as "the Reader," and once excuses himself from a lengthy description of the winter at Great Bear Lake because "the ordinary and uniform occurrences of a winters residence would prove anything but amusing or instructive to the general Reader" (SPRI 31). Obviously, as the Admiralty did not read official journals for amusement, Franklin had his future audience in mind. And when his journal indulges in an anecdote--complete with dialogue--about a Yankee steamboat passenger's inquisitive nature, Franklin is again thinking ahead to his general readers, not the Admiralty. These instances represent not changes made in adapting the journal into narrative, but actual intrusions of one anticipated audience into the address intended for another.

As I have shown elsewhere (Davis, 1989), Franklin's revision of the 1825-27 accounts involves converting the measured delineations of geographic locale intended for the Admiralty into picturesque landscapes designed for an audience craving travel literature. At other times, he transforms the navigational tools used for geographical discovery into devices suitable to the landscape artist's needs. Such alterations represent a changed attitude in Franklin. Unable to rely solely on the events of his expedition, he must address the tastes of the audience he anticipates will read his book. He must become an author and not simply a recorder of geographical information useful to the Admiralty.

Much the same is true of the altered image that he projects of the native people he encounters in Rupert's Land, an alteration dealt with elsewhere (Davis, 1987). No longer able to depend on the apparently malevolent hostility of the barren land environment that serves as the protagonist in his first expedition account, he must create a protagonist. By rendering darker, more dangerous, and more sinister portraits of the Indians and Inuit than what appear in the journal, as Glyndwr Williams points out William Dampier had done with his portrait of Australian Aborigines in A New Voyage round the World, Franklin attempts to heighten the excitement and appeal of his narrative. In the same way the created landscapes cater to the typical audience of travel writing, the created image of savages "red in tooth and claw- intensifies the bold adventure of the undertaking, appealing to the same popular sensibility that made the 1819-22 narrative a bestseller.

Thus, we see that Franklin's Narrative of a Second Expedition joins ranks with those writings of explorers that are not so innocent of literary intentions as Northrop Frye assumed nearly three decades ago. Recent work by a growing number of educated readers demonstrates clearly that explorers engaged quite consciously in their new authorial endeavours, and Frye's easy disn-dssal of their "literary intention" is no longer, justified or commonly accepted.

Once explorers' accounts are understood to participate in the realm of literature, instead of being only repositories for geographical information and anthropological lore, we can benefit from looking at them from different perspectives. For one thing, this understanding that Franklin has manipulated his material in order to engage his audience is part of the larger critical awakening that has enabled exploration writing, like many previously marginalized genres, to play a more important role in the perceived development of Canada's literature.

And in matters of literary theory, as distinct from Canada's literary history, the explorer's authorial intent has special relevance. For example, just as post-New Critical thinking about literature has questioned the sanctity of an authoritative written text isolated from both author and audience, considering Franklin's intent in creating Narrative of a Second Expedition forces us to see that the public narrative comes no closer to any sort of truth than do his various other accounts of the 1825-27 expedition. Instead, each one has its own combination of truth and lies. For many years readers were content to accept the final printed version of the narrative as the text. While the original field journal and what appears to be a condensed "fair copy" of that field journal have been left in manuscript, Narrative of a Second Expedition--in spite of its lukewarm reception immediately after the expedition--has recently been reproduced in facsimile."⁸ But as I try to show in this paper and in my other work on Franklin, many factors were operating here that shaped the narrative, and they were factors external to "the well-wrought urn" of Franklin's public account. To read the narrative as though it were not affected by the author's desire to accommodate the tastes of his audience would be a skewed reading indeed.

Each of Franklin's texts has its own authority, and in spite of perhaps being the most polished of the texts, Franklin's public narrative comes no nearer to an expression of his experience than does the Adn-dralty journal. In fact, in many respects one might consider the narrative the most corrupt, in the sense that it panders to the perceived tastes of a popular audience, whereas the journal often seems to come closer to an expression of the author's own response to his experience. But even this suggestion reveals a vestigial tendency to give one text status over another, whereas the only real conclusion we can reach is that both journal and narrative bear status as distinct but equivalent texts, and that both must be considered in terms of their individual contextual restraints.

There is an ultimate irony here, although one that Franklin never intended. While Franklin explored miles of unknown arctic coastline and encountered indigenous North Americans who had never before seen a European, the public account of those experiences was, in part, written by a European audience who had never before crossed the Atlantic. And perhaps the irony here is double-edged. Not only do popular readers, theoretically seeking to learn about distant and unknown arctic regions, instead have their prior cultural attitudes toward landscape and New World peoples reaffirmed rather than expanded, but when they pick up Franklin's narrative, expecting a non-fictional account of an important geographical and historical event, what they get is not history, but Franklin telling his story. Recognizing the common ground shared by history and fiction has been a central concern to post-modern historians and literary critics alike. It is a recognition that comes easily once we realize the "literary intentions" of the explorer cum author.

NOTES

¹ In this paper, I distinguish carefully between the terms "journal" and "narrative." I use the word "journal" to denote the day-by-day record kept in the field; "narrative" refers to the account written up after the journey (and journal) is complete. Although this exact usage is not always followed--either historically or critically--"narrative" was generally used in titles of nineteenth-century exploration accounts that were composed and published in Britain. I continue to use "narrative" in the same sense, using "journal" for the more immediate record.

² It is worth noting that Franklin, like many another officer, did not, however, always make journal entries at the end of each day. Rather~ we would occasionally comment on the previous several days at one sitting, especially when conditions did not offer the luxury of making an entry each evening. Meteorlogical observations, navigational figures, etc. were temporarily jotted down in a note book until Franklin had the opportunity to record them in his journal, along with other commentary.

³ Throughout the nineteenth century, one guinea was worth slightly more than one pound. It was valued at 21 shillings, a pound at 20 shillings.

⁴ This correspondence is not dated by Franklin, nor does it bear a post mark. An unidentified hand has written "October 1824?" at the top of the letter, but clearly this suggestion is wrong. Franklin speaks of having the book out by 1 June or the 4th at the latest. The National Register of Archives identifies the letter as #334 in "The Gell Mss. of Hopton" and dates the letter "(1823) or (1824)(?)." A letter from Franklin to W.P. Cumby, dated 29 January 1823, speaks of having the narrative "ready for the public in a short time" (AINA).

⁵ 1 am very much indebted to Dr. Joyce M. Banks, Rare Books & Conservation Librarian, Public Services Branch, National Library of Canada, and to Ms. Sandra Alston, Metropolitan Toronto Library, for bringing this unusual circumstance to my attention. Both Dr. Banks and Ms. Alston have provided me with considerable assistance and information to help me sort out this odd bibliographic problem.

⁶ The letter itself only thanks Murray for his response to Franklin's letter of the day before, in which Franklin requests further payment for the second edition. But writtenin an unknown hand at the top of the letter is a note reading: "ack'ing a draft for 200 guineas for Second Exn."

⁷ Franklin obviously does not distinguish between "journal" and "narrative" in the same manner as is used in this paper.

⁸ 1 refer to the M.G. Hurtig facsimile reprint published in Edmonton in 1971

WORKS CITED

Arctic Institute of North America Collection [AINA1. University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta.

Carter, John. ABC for Book Collectors. 4th ed. 1952. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1967.

Dampier, William. A New Voyage round the World. Ed. A.Gray. 1697. London, 1937.

Davis, Richard C. "Thrice-Told Tales: The Exploration Writing of John Franklin." The North: Essays in Canadian Culture and Literature. Ed. J. Carlsen and B. Streijffert. Lund, Sweden: Lund University Press, 1987. 20-29.

---. "Vision and Revision: John Franklin's Arctic Landscapes." Australian-Canadian Studies 6.2 (1989): 23-33.

Frye, Northrop. "Conclusion." Literary History of Canada: Canadian Literature in English. Ed. Carl F. Klinck. Toronto: UTP, 1965. 821-849.

Gell Collection. Hopton Hall. Wirksworth, Derbyshire, England.

Hearne, Samuel. A Journey from Prince of Wales's Fort in Hudson's Bay to the Northern Ocean 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772. Ed. Richard Glover. 1795. Toronto: Macmillan, 1958.

Hopwood, Victor. "Explorers by Land: To 1860." Literary History of Canada: Canadian Literature in English. Ed. Carl F. Klinck. Toronto: UTP, 1965. 19-40.

Houston, C. Stuart, ed. To the Arctic by Canoe, 1819-1821: The Journal and Paintings of Robert Hood. Montreal: Arctic Institute of North America/McGill-Queen's Press. 1974.

---. Arctic Ordeal: The Journal of Sir John Richardson. Montreal: McGill-Queen's Press. 1984.

Mackenzie, Alexander. Voyages from Montreal, on the River St. Laurence, through the Continent of North America, to the Frozen and Pacific Oceans; in the Years 1789 and 1793. 1801. Edmonton: M.G. Hurtig, 1971.

MacLaren, I..S. "The Aesthetic Mapping of Nature in the Second Franklin Expedition." Journal of Canadian Studies 20.1 (1985): 39-57.

---. "Samuel Hearne's Accounts of the Massacre at Bloody Fall, 17 July 1771." ARIEL 22.1 (1991): 25-51.

Murray Archives. London, England. Franklin to John Murray Correspondence. I wish to thank I.S. MacLaren for his assistance in locating and transcribing this correspondence.

National Register of Archives. Historical Manuscripts Commission. London, England. Unpublished typescript. n.d.

The Explorer Cum Author 111

National Union Catalogue; Pre-1956 Imprints. Vol. 183. London: Mansell Information/Publishing Ltd., 1971.

Owen, Roderic. The Fate of Franklin. London: Hutchinson, 1978.

Ponsonby, Arthur. English Diaries. 1923. Freeport, New York: Books for Libraries Press, 1971.

Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI). Cambridge University. Cambridge, England. Ms. 248/280/2. The page number refers to Franklin's own manuscript pagination.

Travel in Aquatint and Lithography 1770-1860 from the Library of J.R. Abbey: A Bibliographical Catalogue. Vol. 2. London: Curwen Press, 1957.

Williams, Glyndwr. "Australia: Doing Native History Without Fur-Trade Spectacles." Paper presented at Rupert's Land Research Centre Orkney Island Colloquium. Stromness, Scotland, 27 May - 8 June 1990.