In The South Seas Annotated

Differentiated book- It has a historical context with research of the time-In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson.Towards the end of the Equator cruise, Robert Louis Stevenson began trying to gather the material he had collected on the culture, language, traditions, and society of the South Seas: anthropology, history, sociology along with personal impressions. He had already agreed with SS McClure (in 1888) to sell him "letters" from the South Seas to be distributed in newspapers and magazines. He hoped to use them for materials for the "big book" in the Pacific.The volume published as In the South Seas was edited by Sidney Colvin and published after RLS's death in 1896.Robert Louis Stevenson felt he had unique material: "stories so wild, scenes so beautiful, intimacies so unique, manners and traditions, such an incredible mix of the beautiful and horrible, the wild and the civilized. [...]I propose to call the book The South Seas ... "(RLS Letter to Sidney Colvin, December 2, 1889, The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, ed. By Bradford A. Booth and Ernest Mehew, vol vi [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995], p. 335). He worked on the material for two years, from October 1889 until the fall of 1891, but then had to leave the job. In part, this was because he couldn't find the correct way.

"The first experience can never be repeated. The first love, the first sunrise, the first South Sea island, are memories apart ..." In the South Seas records Stevenson's travels with his wife Fanny and their family in the Marquesas, the Paumotus, and the Gilbert Islands during 1888-9. Originally drafted in journal form while Stevenson travelled, it was then ambitiously rewritten to describe the islands and islanders as well as Stevenson's own personal experiences. These revisions continued when Stevenson settled on the Samoan island where he died in 1894, and In the South Seas was published posthumously in 1896. Its combination of personal anecdote and historical account, of autobiography and anthropology, of Stevenson and South Sea islands, has a particular charm.

In the South Seas, as here available to the reader, is the result of a journey on the 'Casco' together with Stevenson's mother, wife and stepson. The earlier parts, those on the Marquesas and Paumotos, or low or atoll islands, most definitely mark Stevenson's original intention ; those on the Gilberts, with their picture of the king Tembinok, are more in the personal strain of R. L. S., and are thus accepted as the most successful part of these writings. But the things most to be regretted about them is their omissions ; nothing of Stevenson's long stay at Tautira as the guest of the chief Ori a Ori, nor of his visit to the leper settlement of Molokai. His letters to friends in England, and the extracts from his journal in the ' Life ' do something to fill in these gaps, but not in proportion to the interest of the subjects.

IN THE SOUTH SEAS records Stevenson's travels with his wife Fanny and their family in the Marquesas, the Paumotus and the Gilbert Islands during 1888-9. Originally drafted in journal form while Stevenson travelled, it was then ambitiously rewrittento describe the islands and islanders as well as Stevenson's own personal experiences. IN THE SOUTH SEAS was published posthumously in 1896. Its combination of personal anecdote and historical account, of autobiography and anthropology, of Stevenson and South Sea Islands, has a particular charm.

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