In the South Seas
by Robert Louis Stevenson
"The first experience can never happen again. The first love, the first sunrise, the first island of the South Sea are separate memories..." The South Seas records Stevenson's voyage with his wife Fanny and her family in 1888-9 across the Marquezs, Paumotus and Gilbert Islands. Originally compiled in the form of a magazine during Stevenson's journey, the book was later ambitiously rewritten to describe the islands and islanders and Stevenson's own personal experience. These revisions continued with Stevenson settling on the island of Samoa, where he died in 1894, and In the South Seas was published posthumously in 1896. The combination of personal anecdote and historical narrative, autobiography and anthropology, Stevenson Islands and the South Sea has a special appeal.
