From 1888 to 1915 Robert Louis Stevenson and Jack London were uniquely placed to witness and record the imperial struggle for the South Pacific. Engaging the major European colonial empires and the USA, the struggle questioned ideas of liberty, racial identity and class like few other arenas of the time. Exploring a unique moment in South Pacific and Western history through the work of Stevenson and London, this study assesses the impact of their national identities on works like The Amateur Emigrant and Adventure; discusses their attitudes towards colonialism, race and class; shows how they negotiated different cultures and peoples in their writing and considers where both writers are placed in the Western tradition of writing about the Pacific. By contextualizing Stevenson's and London's South Pacific work, this study reveals two critical voices of late nineteenth-century and early 20th-century colonialism that deserve to stand beside their contemporary Joseph Conrad in shaping contemporary attitudes towards imperialism, race, and class.

A study tracing issues of race, class and imperialism in the South Pacific through the work of Robert Louis Stevenson and Jack London.

The first book-length study of London as a maritime writer Jack London’s fiction has been studied previously for its thematic connections to the ocean, but Jack London and the Sea marks the first time that his life as a writer has been considered extensively in relationship to his own sailing history and interests. In this new study, Anita Duneer claims a central place for London in the maritime literary tradition, arguing that for him romance and nostalgia for the Age of Sail work with and against the portrayal of a gritty social realism associated with American naturalism in urban or rural settings. The sea provides a dynamic setting for London’s navigation of romance, naturalism, and realism to interrogate key social and philosophical dilemmas of modernity: race, class, and gender. Furthermore, the maritime tradition spills over into texts that are not set at sea. Jack London and the Sea does not address all of London’s sea stories, but rather identifies key maritime motifs that influenced his creative process. Duneer’s critical methodology employs techniques of literary and cultural analysis, drawing on extensive archival research from a wealth of previously unpublished biographical materials and other sources. Duneer explores London’s immersion in the lore and literature of the sea, revealing the extent to which his writing is informed by travel narratives, sensational sea yarns, and the history of exploration, as well as firsthand experiences as a sailor in the San Francisco Bay and Pacific Ocean. Organized thematically, chapters address topics that interested London: labor abuses on “Hell-ships” and copra plantations, predatory and survival cannibalism, strong seafaring women, and environmental issues and property rights from San Francisco oyster beds to pearl diving in the Paumotos. Through its examination of the intersections of race, class, and gender in London’s writing, Jack London and the Sea plumbs the often-troubled waters of his representations of the racial Other and positions of capitalist and colonial privilege. We can see the manifestation of these socioeconomic hierarchies in London’s depiction of imperialist exploitation of labor and the environment, inequities that continue to reverberate in our current age of global capitalism.

Roslyn Jolly is Lecturer in English at the University of New South Wales, Australia. She is the author of Henry James: History, Narrative, Fiction (OUP, 1993).

This book tackles photography’s role during Robert Louis Stevenson’s travels throughout the Pacific Island region and is the first study of his family’s previously unpublished photographs. Cutting across disciplinary boundaries, the book integrates photographs with letters, non-fiction, and poetry, and includes much unpublished material. The original readings of photographs and non-fiction highlight Stevenson’s engagement with colonial ideology and reality and advance new arguments about Victorian travel, settlement, and colonialisms in the Pacific. Like the Stevensons, the book moves from the Marquesas to the atolls of the Gilbert Islands in Micronesia; from the Kingdom of Hawai‘i’s political ambitions to Samoan plantations and the Stevensons’ settlement at Vailima. Central to this study is the notion that Pacific history and Pacific Island cultures matter to the interpretation of Stevenson's work, and a rigorous historical and cultural contextualization ensures that local details structure literary and photographic interpretation. The book’s historical grounding is key to its insightful conclusions regarding travel, settlement, photography, and colonialism.

"Reframes Polynesia and Melanesia through analysis of nineteenth-century travel writing"--

A Companion to Scottish Literature offers fresh readings of major authors and periods of Scottish literary production from the first millennium to the present. Bringing together contributions by many of the world’s leading experts in the field, this comprehensive resource provides the historical background of Scottish literature, highlights new critical approaches, and explores wider cultural and institutional contexts. Dealing with texts in the languages of Scots, English, and Gaelic, the Companion offers modern perspectives on the historical milieux, thematic contexts and canonical writers of Scottish literature. Original essays apply the most up-to-date critical and scholarly analyses to a uniquely wide range of topics, such as Gaelic literature, national and diasporic writing, children’s literature, Scottish drama and theatre, gender and sexuality, and women’s writing. Critical readings examine William Dunbar, Robert Burns, Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson, Muriel Spark and Carol Ann Duffy, amongst others. With full references and guidance for further reading, as well as numerous links to online resources, A Companion to Scottish Literature is essential reading for advanced students and scholars of Scottish literature, as well as academic and non-academic readers with an interest in the subject.