Letters from High Latitudes

Letters from High Latitudes is the 1857 travel book by Lord Dufferin, Frederick Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava (1826-1902), the Anglo-Irish peer and diplomat who later served as Governor General of Canada from 1872 to 1878 and as Viceroy of India from 1884 to 1888. The book records Dufferin’s 1856 voyage in his yacht Foam from Stornoway in the Outer Hebrides to Iceland, Jan Mayen, and Spitsbergen, written in the form of letters home to his mother. Dufferin attends the millenary of the founding of the Icelandic Althing at Thingvellir, visits the geysers and volcanoes of Iceland, and pushes north to the Arctic ice off Spitsbergen. The book was widely read in Victorian Britain and went through many editions, and it remains the most quoted Victorian English account of Iceland and the high latitudes. Free PDF download available on BDeBooks.