BURNETT, Frank

Through Polynesia and Papua. Wanderings with a Camera in Southern Seas

London, Francis Griffiths, 1911.

Octavo, [iii]-xvi (first half-title, last blank), 198 (last blank), [10] (publisher's advertisements) pages plus 92 plates and a folding map.

Gilt-pictorial cloth, top edge gilt, others uncut; cloth a little rubbed and bumped at the extremities; flyleaves offset; blank bottom corner piece and a thin strip along the leading edge snipped from one leaf (pages 55/6); an excellent copy.

'My views and opinions upon the Missionary question may not, in some quarters, be perceived with approval. They are, however, the results of years of investigation and close study of a subject which I approached with an impartial and unprejudiced mind. I have also the satisfaction of knowing, for a certainty, that my conclusions in the matter are those of a great majority of Government Officials, resident traders, and those travellers who have visited the islands' (the introduction; see also the Appendix, pages 191-97). There may or may not be any connection with this disclaimer in the third paragraph of the introduction, but fully half of the illustrations include bare-breasted or naked women. More than a handful carry captions like 'Tahitian Girl, in [sic] deshabille', 'A Woodland Nymph, Tahiti', 'Tahitian Girl Bathing', and 'Water Nymph, Raratonga', and one of them, a young reclining 'Tahitian Girl', is reproduced in gilt on the front cover.