While Thomas James is not widely known today, this was not always the case: his 1633 publication The Strange and Dangerous Voyage of Captaine Thomas James was, until the early nineteenth century, the British public's primary source of information about what we now know as northern Canada. The account of his attempt to find the Northwest Passage and the winter he spent on an island in James Bay made his name synonymous with exploration and the north. Over the centuries James's narrative was used to compile travel books and to compose philosophical treatises, histories, children's books, as well as poetry and novels - most notably, it influenced Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Colleen Franklin's critical edition of the Voyage is the first since 1894. Her introduction details how James engages with both medieval and early modern perceptions of the north as well as the early modern imperative to base knowledge on observation and experience, and offers a history of the text's reception from its first publication into the nineteenth century. An invaluable reference on the early European exploration of North America, The Strange and Dangerous Voyage of Captaine Thomas James sheds new light on the representation of the Canadian north.

Colleen M. Franklin is adjunct professor in the Department of Religious Studies and the Department of English at Laurentian University.

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“This edition is a work of enormous research and reveals a broad, sustained engagement with its topic. Franklin anticipates nearly any question a reader might have when reading James’s narrative. It will be an invaluable reference tool for anyone interested in the history of Canada, British exploration, the search for the Northwest Passage, or the rise of the ‘new philosophy’ and its influence on exploration. In addition to its importance in making available a seminal work on North American exploration, Franklin’s edition shows the value of deep research and interdisciplinary scholarship.” Hester Blum, Department of English, Pennsylvania State University

"Franklin has done a great service in providing a new critical edition of James's Strange and Dangerous Voyage, a text that all scholars working on exploration of the Canadian north or the Northwest Passage should know. She also rightly demonstrates the i