Table of Contents

1. Introduction; 2. Killing the god: the afterlife of Cook's death; 3. Mutineers and beachcombers; 4. Missionary endeavours; 5. Trade and adventure; 6. 'Taking up with kanakas': Robert Louis Stevenson and the Pacific; 7. Skin and Bones: Jack London's diseased Pacific; 8. The French Pacific; 9. Epilogue.

Promotional Information

Examines representations of the South Pacific by explorers, missionaries, travellers, writers, and artists, 1767–1914.

Reviews

'It is extremely refreshing to encounter work that displays all the lucid, interdisciplinary bounce of cultural theory and is also carefully attentive to historical, geographical and social reality ... a lively discursive account ... in scientific literature, theatre, painting, poetry, history and the novel, in Britain, across to the US and back to the emerging nations of the Pacific ... It is a method that sustains the whole of this marvellous book ... a rich and fascinating index of Pacific images and narratives.' David Hansen, The Australian's Review of Books 'A finely attuned account of the way Europeans represented the Pacific world from Cook to Gauguin ... A masterly survey ... A fascinating account.' Bernard Smith, Australian Book Review