Electronic Internet Edition A gift from the son of Henson's biographer. The first authentically restored edition of
A Negro Explorer At The North Pole, © 1912 by Matthew A. Henson

Preface to the 2000 edition by Bradley Robinson
Introduction to the 1947excerpt by Bradley Robinson

matthew henson 1909

The pain, tiredness, and stress shows on Matt's face when he arrived back on board the Roosevelt after reaching the Pole. This photo from the Library of Congress also exists as a print that hangs in the New York Explorers Club. My father used it on the cover of the1947 Biography he wrote with Henson.

Why I Created This Reproduction by Bradley Robinson
My father, Bradley Robinson, wrote Matthew Henson's official biography, Dark Companion, with Henson in 1947. Brad also published 6,400 words of A Negro Explorer in a 1947 collection of adventure stories he edited. He was the first person to reprint a portion of Matt's book. After Dad died I restored his Henson biography and republished it in 1997. At that time A Negro Explorer was available as either a cheap paperback or a $59 low quality photocopy. Original 1912 copies were so rare they sold for $1700 to $3000.

When the cheap paperback went out of print I decided to finance the republication of Matt's amazing story myself. First I was fortunate to obtain an original in surprisingly fine condition for only $650. Then I set aside the time and resources to publish a version faithful to the original. Previous printings merely used old book pages as "camera ready art" to make offset printing plates. A few new pages were added containing the publishers information, a new introduction, etc. No one took the time to convert the text to modern typesetting.

How my edition was made
This edition was created by scanning my 1912 copy with optical character recognition (OCR) software. Text was formatted, checked, and edited in word processing software. If I had simply scanned my copy of A Negro Explorer into an image format (GIF, JPEG or TIFF) the pages would not be actual text (like offset printing plates). I wanted teachers and students to be able to cut & paste this text to use for educational purposes. The file size of image type scans would create a bandwidth problem (huge file size) for Internet distribution. By taking the time and making an extra effort to convert Matt's book into electronic text means that it can now be efficiently distributed over the web. The file size is small and efficient. Anyone with online access can download a copy 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

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