Describes Stevenson's experiences in the Marquesas, Tahiti, Hawaii, and Samoa, where he lived until his death in 1894, and includes photographs taken by Stevenson

Differentiated book- It has a historical context with research of the time-In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson.Towards the end of the Equator cruise, Robert Louis Stevenson began trying to gather the material he had collected on the culture, language, traditions, and society of the South Seas: anthropology, history, sociology along with personal impressions. He had already agreed with SS McClure (in 1888) to sell him "letters" from the South Seas to be distributed in newspapers and magazines. He hoped to use them for materials for the "big book" in the Pacific.The volume published as In the South Seas was edited by Sidney Colvin and published after RLS's death in 1896.Robert Louis Stevenson felt he had unique material: "stories so wild, scenes so beautiful, intimacies so unique, manners and traditions, such an incredible mix of the beautiful and horrible, the wild and the civilized. [...]I propose to call the book The South Seas ... "(RLS Letter to Sidney Colvin, December 2, 1889, The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, ed. By Bradford A. Booth and Ernest Mehew, vol vi [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995], p. 335). He worked on the material for two years, from October 1889 until the fall of 1891, but then had to leave the job. In part, this was because he couldn't find the correct way.

In the South Seas, as here available to the reader, is the result of a journey on the 'Casco' together with Stevenson's mother, wife and stepson. The earlier parts, those on the Marquesas and Paumotos, or low or atoll islands, most definitely mark Stevenson's original intention ; those on the Gilberts, with their picture of the king Tembinok, are more in the personal strain of R. L. S., and are thus accepted as the most successful part of these writings. But the things most to be regretted about them is their omissions ; nothing of Stevenson's long stay at Tautira as the guest of the chief Ori a Ori, nor of his visit to the leper settlement of Molokai. His letters to friends in England, and the extracts from his journal in the ' Life ' do something to fill in these gaps, but not in proportion to the interest of the subjects.