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Robert Louis Stevenson's travels throughout the Pacific Island region and is the first study of his family's previously unpublished photographs.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disciplinary boundaries, the book integrates photographs with letters, non-fiction, and poetry, and includes much unpublished material.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.
Rezensionen / Stimmen
"Pacific Impressions offers a comprehensive and nuanced reading of Stevenson's experience and artistic endeavors in the Pacific Islands. Stevenson scholars will find a wealth of compelling material, both biographical and analytical. Manfredi also offers a model for Victorian studies of empire, paying just as close attention to local and Indigenous people and histories as she does to British perspectives." (Chris Thomas, Victorian Studies, Vol. 63 (1), 2020)
"Stevenson scholars as well as those broadly interested in the study of late 19th-century colonialism in the Pacific will benefit from the materials and insights in this volume." (L.M. Ratnapalan, The Journal of Pacific History, Vol. 55 (1), 2020)
