The Frozen Deep

The Frozen Deep was a play, originally staged as an amateur theatrical, written by Wilkie Collins along with the substantial guidance of Charles Dickens. Dickens's hand was so prominent -- adding a proem, altering lines, and attending to most of the props and sets -- that the principal edition of the play is entitled "Under the Management of Charles Dickens."

The play was loosely inspired by the loss of Sir John Franklin's lost Arctic expedition of 1845, in which Dickens had taken a great interest. Specifically, in the fall of 1854, when the Hudson's Bay Company factor Dr. John Rae brought back reports of cannibalism among Franklin's men, Dickens was so perturbed that he launched a debate with Rae in the pages of his own periodical, Household Words.