Provides a fresh insight into Stevenson's multi-voiced South Seas fiction, as well as into the particulars and complications of living within a newly established site of Empire.
'...a considerable work of historical imagination based on a major work of reconstruction... It manages to create a very coherent set of individual essays on Stevenson in the South Pacific while adding considerably to our actual knowledge of Stevenson in this late period.' John Maynard, Professor of English, New York University '...highly original, offering insights into the workings of Stevenson's mind gleaned from sources marginalized, overlooked, or never before assembled with these particular focal points...Useful, thoughtful, exuberant, and amazingly cohesive, this book includes a solid bibliography and index and 26 illustrations...Highly recommended.' Choice '... [a] valuable addition to Stevenson studies...' Journal of Stevenson Studies 'The publication of more images from the Stevenson photographic archive is extremely welcome... this book is very good indeed and should be read by all who are interested in the wider cultural contexts of Stevenson's Pacific work.' Journal of British Studies '... a valuable addition to our knowledge of Stevenson's last years in the South Seas. Using new documentation [...] she is able to add a wealth of detail and nuance to what we know about his relationship to the islands and to the colonial enterprise... Colley has given us a revisionary view of Stevenson's life and work that allows us to see him in all of his complexity... she brings new, often illuminating, information... I always shared in her excitement of discovery, felt that she was bringing Stevenson the person closer to us, and welcomed her well-documented insistence on his nuanced response to colonialism...' ELT '... Colley's is the most thorough study to date of Stevenson's complex attitudes, as evinced both in his life and in his writings, toward missionary culture and missionary work in the late nineteenth century... wealth of interesting detail... broaches large issues by way of small details, but details are unfailingly telling, and they serve to ill
