Borden, Mrs. John [Courtney Letts]

The Cruise of the Northern Light, Explorations and Hunting in the Alaskan and Siberian Arctic [SIGNED]

New York: Macmillan, 1928.

First Edition. Hardcover. Very good. xi, 317 pp, with endpaper map, illustrations from photographs. Original black cloth, no dust jacket. Signed by the author on the half-title page. Courtney Letts came from a wealthy Chicago family and was one of the "Big Four"--a group of debutantes known as the city's most attractive and socially desirable women. In 1920, she married John Borden, a prominent Chicago attorney, trustee of the Field Museum, and avid adventurer and sportsman. In 1927, he was appointed to head a scientific expedition on behalf of the museum, and his wife was eager to accompany him. The party cruised north via the Inside Passage to Alaska, westward to Dutch Harbor, north through the Bering Strait to Point Hope, Wrangel Island, and then Cape Serdze Kamen before returning to San Francisco (Arctic Bib 1978). They hunted for grizzly and polar bears, walrus, and seals, and collected birds and arctic plants. Mrs. Borden kept a daily diary of the trip, which she turned into a lively book that includes details of expedition planning and preparation, tales of hunting and peril on the seas, and also nice detail about the tiny Alaskan towns they passed through and the people they encountered.