‘One of the Classic (And Most Often Quoted) Books on the Hawaiian Islands’
BISHOP, Isabella Lucy (née BIRD).
The Hawaiian Archipelago: Six Months Amongst the Palm Groves, Coral Reefs, and Volcanoes of the Sandwich Islands... Seventh Edition. With Illustrations. London: Bradbury, Agnew, & Co. Ltd. for John Murray, ‘1890’ [but c. 1894].
8vo (188 x 122mm), pp. xv, [1 (illustrations)], 318, [2 (publisher’s advertisements)], 32 (further publisher’s advertisements dated January 1894); wood-engraved frontispiece, one folding map by J.D. Cooper, 10 wood-engraved illustrations and plans, 2 full page, and letterpress tables in the text; original green cloth, upper board with blind border and central design in gilt, spine lettered and ruled in gilt, black endpapers, most quires unopened; extremities very lightly rubbed and bumped, nonetheless an exceptionally bright, largely unopened copy.
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The Hawaiian Archipelago: Six Months Amongst the Palm Groves, Coral Reefs, and Volcanoes of the Sandwich Islands... Seventh Edition. With Illustrations. London: Bradbury, Agnew, & Co. Ltd.
Seventh edition. As Bishop states in her preface, ‘I was travelling for health, when circumstances induced me to land on the group, and the benefit which I derived from the climate tempted me to remain for nearly seven months. During that time the necessity of leading a life of open air and exercise as a means of recovery, led me to travel on horseback to and fro through the islands, exploring the interior, ascending the highest mountains, visiting the active volcanoes and remote regions that are known to few even of the residents, living among the natives, and otherwise seeing Hawaiian life in all its phases’ (p. ix).
Bishop’s The Hawaiian Archipelago is composed of thirty-one letters she wrote to her sister Henrietta and was first published in 1875; this edition follows the text of the revised second edition, which appeared in 1876 with a new preface and an appendix on ‘Leprosy and the Leper Settlement on Molokal’, as well as other revisions and amendments. Hawaiian National Bibliography judges that it is ‘[o]ne of the classic (and most often quoted) books on the Hawaiian Islands’, adding that, ‘[i]t was immensely popular and went through many editions’.
For the 1st ed., cf. Hawaiian National Bibliography 3070; Theakstone p. 23; Wayward Women p. 81.