The Last Gentleman Adventurer - by Edward Beauclerk Maurice & Lawrence Millman (Paperback)

About the Book

At 16, Maurice impulsively signed up with the Hudson's Bay Company and was sent to an isolated trading post in the Canadian Arctic, where he immersed himself in the Inuit people's culture and way of life. Through deadly epidemics and the struggle to survive, the young man from England came of age.

Book Synopsis

At sixteen, Edward Beauclerk Maurice impulsively signed up with the Hudson's Bay Company -- the company of Gentleman Adventurers -- and ended up at an isolated trading post in the Canadian Arctic, where there was no communication with the outside world and only one ship arrived each year. But he was not alone. The Inuit people who traded there taught him how to track polar bears, build igloos, and survive ferocious winter storms. He learned their language and became completely immersed in their culture, earning the name Issumatak, meaning "he who thinks."

In The Last Gentleman Adventurer, Edward Beauclerk Maurice relates his story of coming of age in the Arctic and transports the reader to a time and a way of life now lost forever.

Review Quotes

"Enthralling." The New York Times

"Maurice evokes his Arctic in vivid detail." Boston Globe

"An unrivaled portrait of Unuit life." -- National Geographic Adventurer

"Effortlessly entertaining." The Washington Post

"A fascinating often funny chronicle of his early years among the Inuit." Entertainment Weekly