You’ve picked up a really nice example of a late-19th-century popular exploration book—the kind that helped turn Arctic adventure into mass entertainment.

📘

The Story of Exploration & Adventure in the Frozen Seas

(1896)

🧭 What the book is

• Author: Prescott Holmes
• Published: 1896 (Victorian era, peak fascination with polar exploration)
• Audience: General readers, especially young readers and families
• Purpose: To tell the story of Arctic (and some Antarctic) exploration in an engaging, narrative-driven way

This isn’t a primary expedition account—it’s a compiled storytelling history, drawing on earlier explorers’ journals and reports.

❄️ What’s inside (based on your contents pages)

Your table of contents gives a very clear roadmap of the book’s scope:

Early exploration & discovery

• The Arctic lands (introductory geography and conditions)
• Voyages from the Cabots to William Baffin
• Expansion of knowledge of northern coasts and seas

The great age of Arctic exploration

• Sir John Franklin and the Northwest Passage (a central Victorian obsession)
• American explorers like Elisha Kent Kane and Isaac Hayes
• British naval expeditions (e.g., Nares and the ships Alert and Discovery)

Later 19th-century expeditions

• The tragic Jeannette expedition (De Long)
• The push toward the North Pole via Greenland
• Fridtjof Nansen’s voyages
• Even early, speculative attempts like “to the Pole by balloon”

👉 In other words: it’s a sweep from early discovery to the cutting edge of 1890s exploration.

🧠 What makes it interesting (for your purposes)

1. It captures the

mindset

before the Arctic was “known”

This book sits right in the period when:

• The Northwest Passage was still being actively pursued
• The North Pole had not yet been reached (Peary’s claim comes later, 1909)
• Exploration still had a mix of heroism, mystery, and speculation

Perfect for your Mistakes on Maps theme—this is the culture that sustained ideas like the Open Polar Sea and other geographic misconceptions.

2. It blends fact with Victorian storytelling

Books like this often:

• Dramatically portray suffering, heroism, and endurance
• Simplify or embellish events for readability
• Present explorers almost as mythic figures

So it’s not just history—it’s how history was told to the public.

3. The illustrations matter

Your images (like the penguins engraving) are typical:

• Wood engravings based on expedition sketches
• Sometimes accurate, sometimes stylized or secondhand
• Helped readers visualize places they would never see

These visuals often shaped popular understanding more than maps did.

4. It reflects imperial and cultural context

• Heavy British (and some American) focus
• Exploration framed as progress and conquest
• Indigenous peoples are usually underrepresented or filtered through explorer narratives

🧭 Where it fits historically

This book comes at a fascinating moment:

Period

Status of Arctic knowledge

Early 1800s

Largely unknown, speculative

Mid-1800s

Franklin disaster sparks obsession

Late 1800s (your book)

Most coasts mapped, pole still elusive

Early 1900s

“Race to the Pole” era

So your book is basically:
👉 “Everything we think we know about the Arctic… right before the final breakthroughs.”

💰 Value / collectibility

At ~$20, you did well.

Typical value range:

• $15–$40 for common copies
• More if:
  • Binding is strong
  • Illustrations are intact
  • Decorative cover (yours is attractive)

It’s not rare, but it’s very usable and display-worthy, especially for teaching or storytelling.

🎭 Why it’s great for

Mistakes on Maps

This book is almost tailor-made for your Fringe show:

• It contains the narrative ecosystem that sustained bad ideas
• It shows how partial knowledge + storytelling = belief
• It bridges directly to:
  • Franklin (Northwest Passage)
  • Polar myths
  • Late-stage exploration optimism

You could even use it as a prop or framing device:

“Here’s what an educated reader in 1896 thought they knew about the Arctic…”

If you want, I can pull a few specific stories or quotes from this book style that would translate into short, punchy segments or ballads for your show.