Jeannette Mirsky Papers

Jeannette Rachel Mirsky was born in 1903 to Michael D. Mirsky and Frieda Ettelson Mirsky. She attended Barnard College, where she earned her A.B. in 1924. From 1935-1938 Mirsky did graduate work at Columbia University, studying under Franz Boas and Margaret Mead.

Mirsky was married twice, first to Arthur J. Barsky, who she divorced in 1940, and then to Edward Ginsburg, an industrial engineer, who she married in 1942. Mirsky lived briefly in South Carolina with Ginsburg, but ultimately moved to Princeton, NJ in 1950, where Mirsky would reside for the rest of her life. Edward Ginsburg died in 1959, and Mirsky did not remarry again. Throughout her career she continued to publish under the name Mirsky, although she did change her last name to Ginsburg after her marriage to Edward.

In 1934 Mirsky published her first book,To the North!, which recounts the history of Arctic exploration. Her book largely discredited Frederick Cook's claims to discovering the North Pole, and went out of print for a number of years due to a lawsuit by Cook. The book was re-released in 1946 by Alfred A. Knopf under the new title, To the Arctic!: The Story of Northern Exploration from the Earliest Times to the Present. In addition to English, the book was published in German, Spanish, and French.

Jeannette Mirsky continued to publish books until 1977. Her books include, The Westward Crossings (1946),The World of Eli Whitney (1952),Elisha Kent Kane and the Seafaring Frontier(1954),The Great Chinese Travelers: An Anthology (1964),Houses of God (1965), andSir Aurel Stein, Archaeological Explorer (1977). During this time she also wrote book reviews, was a contributor to Encyclopedia Britannica, edited The Lady, a book by Barnard Professor Emily James Putnam, was a visiting fellow in the department of East Asian Studies at Princeton University, and spent much of her time travelling.

Jeannette Mirsky died in Princeton, NJ on March 10, 1987 at the age of 83.