Abstract
This essay contends that historicized textual analysis must account for the interlaced cultural and environmental conditions of a text’s composition and publication. Focusing on Eleanor Anne Porden’s The Arctic Expeditions (1818) as a depiction of global climate change, I demonstrate the extent to which discursive and ecological events are networked, and the significance of any given node within that network. I contextualize Porden’s poem within the polar publicity campaigns of Admiralty second secretary John Barrow and unprecedented ice-melt caused by the Tambora eruption in 1816, as well as alongside Porden’s quest for recognition as a woman of science and letters.