This comprehensive, annotated, multivolume bibliography is a record of all printed works touching on some aspect of the political, religious, cultural, or social history of the Hawaiian Islands-from the first printed notice mentioning the Islands (in a German periodical of January 1780) to the beginning of the twentieth century, when the Islands ceased to be a separate political entity. Volume I covers the period from 1780 to 1830, when exploratory voyages to the northern Pacific had largely concluded and the arrival of improved printing equipment in the Islands resulted in a substantial increase in the number of works printed by the Mission Press in Honolulu. In addition to books and pamphlets, the bibliography includes newspaper and periodical accounts and single sheet publications such as broadsides, circulars, playbills, and handbills because they often contain the only eyewitness or contemporary description of an important event or individual. Entries pertaining to Captain Cook's Third Voyage dominate the first twenty years of the bibliography. They reflect the profound impact of the voyage on both the Hawaiian culture and on nineteenth-century European thought. Extensive annotations provide a brief summary of approximately 760 published works in the first volume of the bibliography. All known editions of each work are listed, together with the exact title, date of publication, size of the volume, collation of pages, number and type of plates and maps, references, and location of copies. The bibliography will be invaluable to scholars, librarians, rare book sellers, and book collectors within the field of Hawaiiana.

The publication of key voyaging manuscripts has contributed to the flourishing of enduring and prolific worldwide scholarship across numerous fields. These navigators and their texts were instrumental in spurring on further exploration, annexation and ultimately colonisation of the pacific territories in the space of only a few decades. This series will present new sources and primary texts in English, paving the way for postcolonial critical approaches in which the reporting, writing, rewriting and translating of Empire and the ‘Other’ takes precedence over the safeguarding of master narratives. Each of the volumes contains an introduction that sets out the context in which these voyages took place and extensive annotations clarify and explain the original texts. The translated accounts of voyages undertaken by foreign vessels abounded in an era when they encouraged not only competitive geopolitical initiatives but also commercial enterprises throughout Europe, resulting in a voluminous textual corpus. However, French merchant-seaman Etienne Marchand’s journal of his voyage round the world in 1790-1792, encompassing an important visit to the Marquesas Archipelago during his first crossing of the Pacific, remained unpublished until 2005 and has only now been made available in English. The second volume of this series comprises an annotated translation in English of this document.