In the South Seas records Stevenson's travels with his wife Fanny and their family in the Marquesas, the Paumotus and the Gilbert Islands during 1888-9. Originally drafted in journal form while Stevenson travelled, it was then ambitiously rewrittento describe the islands and islanders as well as Stevenson's own personal experiences. In the South Seas was published posthumously in 1896. Its combination of personal anecdote and historical account, of autobiography and anthropology, of Stevenson and South Sea Islands, has a particular charm.

For more than seventy years, Penguin...

Far-Fetched Facts is a fascinating look at travel literature, both real and imaginary, from classical times, via early accounts of the new world, to later accounts of the South Sea islands that lay beyond. Rennie traces continuities from the Odyssey to the twentieth century, and stresses the interplay of fact and fiction in a literature with a notorious tendency to stray from the truth. In the process, he provides close readings of various accounts of the mutiny on the Bounty as well as writings by and about Cook, Bougainville, Defoe, Swift, Byron, Melville, Loti, and Stevenson.

Treasure Neverland is about factual and fictional pirates. Swashbuckling eighteenth-century pirates were the ideal pirates of all time and tales of their exploits are still popular today. Most people have heard of Blackbeard and Captain Kidd even though they lived about three hundred years ago, but most have also heard of other pirates, such as Long John Silver and Captain Hook, even though these pirates never lived at all--except in literature. The differences between these two types of pirates--real and imaginary--are not quite as stark as we might think: the real, historical pirates are...

Treasure Neverland is about factual and fictional pirates. Swashbuckling eighteenth-century pirates were the ideal pirates of all time and tales of their exploits are still popular today. Most people have heard of Blackbeard and Captain Kidd even though they lived about three hundred years ago, but most have also heard of other pirates, such as Long John Silver and Captain Hook, even though these pirates never lived at all--except in literature. The differences between these two types of pirates--real and imaginary--are not quite as stark as we might think: the real, historical pirates are...