During his correspondence with erotic folklore collector Gershon Legman, famed chantey singer and collector Stan Hugill (1906–1992) shared unexpurgated versions of the songs in his repertoire. These bawdy songs were meant to be a part of Legman’s larger project concerning erotic folksong. Upon Legman’s death in 1999, the unfinished and unpublished manuscript sank into obscurity and was believed by many to be permanently lost. Thankfully this “holy grail” of chantey texts had been safe in the private collection of Legman’s widow, Judith Legman, all along. Cabin Boys, Milkmaids, and Rough Seas: Identity in the Unexpurgated Repertoire of Stan Hugill is the first critical investigation of this repository, reproduced here for the first time. Training an interdisciplinary lens on twenty-four unexpurgated texts, author Jessica M. Floyd interrogates the articulation of gender, sexuality, and identity as it is expressed in these cultural artifacts of the sea. Opening with both a critical explication of the chantey genre, as well as situating Hugill’s repertoire in the canon of folksong, the book introduces readers to the critical realities that attend this rich cultural tradition. Analytical chapters demonstrate the kaleidoscopic representation of gender and sexuality in this finite repertoire. Each inquiry is connected and overlapping, demonstrating an ebb and flow not unlike the waters on which the songs were sung. Words of warning, heteronormative economies, and queer undercurrents each collide to present an image of sailing life that is nuanced and complicated, provocative and evocative, transgressive and sometimes radical. The volume allows scholars to place a finger on the pulse of maritime life, feeling and experiencing one voice among the din of working-class song traditions.

The first analysis of a long-missing collection of ribald songs of the sea

Awasin, a Cree Indian boy, and Jamie, a Canadian orphan living with his uncle, the trapper Angus Macnair, are enchanted by the magic of the great Arctic wastes. They set out on an adventure that proves longer and more dangerous than they could have imagined. Drawing on his knowledge of the ways of the wilderness and the implacable northern elements, Farley Mowat has created a memorable tale of daring and adventure. When first published in 1956, Lost in the Barrens won the Governor-General’s Award for Juvenile Literature, the Book-of-the-Year Medal of the Canadian Association of Children’s Librarians and the Boys’ Club of America Junior Book Award.

When twenty-three-year-old Carrie Prudence Winter caught her first glimpse of Honolulu from aboard the Zealandia in October 1890, she had "never seen anything so beautiful." She had been traveling for two months since leaving her family home in Connecticut and was at last only a few miles from her final destination, Kawaiaha'o Female Seminary, a flourishing boarding school for Hawaiian girls. As the daughter of staunch New England Congregationalists, Winter had dreamed of being a missionary teacher as a child and reasoned that "teaching for a few years among the Sandwich Islands seemed particularly attractive" while her fiancé pursued a science degree. During her three years at Kawaiaha'o, Winter wrote often and at length to her "beloved Charlie"; her lively and affectionate letters provide readers with not only an intimate look at nineteenth-century courtship, but many invaluable details about life in Hawai'i during the last years of the monarchy and a young woman's struggle to enter a career while adjusting to surroundings that were unlike anything she had ever experienced. In generous excerpts from dozens of letters, Winter describes teaching and living with her pupils, her relationships with fellow teachers, and her encounters with Hawaiian royalty (in particular Kawaiaha'o enjoyed the patronage of Queen Lili'uokalani, whose adopted daughter was enrolled as a pupil) and members of influential missionary families, as well as ordinary citizens. She discusses the serious health concerns (leprosy, smallpox, malaria) that irrevocably affected the lives of her students and took a keen (if somewhat naive) interest in relaying the political turmoil that ended in the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands by the U.S. in 1898. The book opens with a magazine article written by Winter and published while she was still teaching at Kawaiaha'o, which humorously recounts her journey from Connecticut to Hawai'i and her arrival at the seminary. The work is augmented by more than fifty photographs, four autobiographical student essays, and an appendix identifying all of Winter's students and others mentioned in the letters. A foreword by education historian C. Kalani Beyer provides a context for understanding the Euro-centric and assimilationist curriculum promoted by early schools for Hawaiians like Kawaiaha'o Female Seminary and later the Kamehameha Schools and Mid-Pacific Institute.

An anthology meant to emphasize the "individual, human origins of great fiction . . . built around the lives, works, and ideas of a diverse group of significant major authors" containing "63 stories by 52 authors from approximately 20 countries."