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Pacific Island region and is the first study of his family's previously unpublished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letters non-fiction and poetry and includes much unpublished material.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.
