In 1930 a sixteen-year-old boy left England to become one of the last of the 'gentlemen adventurers' - the fur traders of the Hudson's Bay Company. In the Arctic he found adventure, love and sadness as he came to grips with Eskimo life. Beautifully written, inspiring and funny, this is a boy's own story that captures a world now lost forever.

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.