First Edition
Polynesian Researches during a residence of nearly six years in the South Sea Islands.
London: Fisher, Son, & Jackson, 1829.
Price: $750.00
About the item
First Edition. Eight engraved plates, two maps (one folding) and other woodcut illustrations in text. 2 vols. 8vo. First Edition. Contemporary marbled boards, brown calf spine and tips, boards abraded and spines worn, some internal staining, but a tight, crisp copy. O'Reilly & Reitman, Bibliographie de Tahiti 7556; Hill Collection of Pacific Voyages, p. 96 (citing edition of 1830); Day, Books About Hawaii 24; Hawaiian National Bibliography 719.
Item #14664
The first edition of an epochal work by a scholar and missionary, who lived in and wrote extensively of Hawaii and Polynesia and later Madagascar. After an adventurous life in foreign and frequently insalubrious climes he died of a chill caught in an English railway carriage. Robert Southey, in a review of Polynesian Researches, stated “A more interesting book we have never pursued”, and it has become one of the classic accounts of South Sea Island culture and life.
