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In the Strange South Seas
English, Pages 506. Reprinted in 2015 with the help of original edition published long back[1908]. This book is in black & white, Hardcover, sewing binding for longer life with Matt laminated multi-Colour Dust Cover, Printed on high quality Paper, re-sized as per Current standards, professionally processed without changing its contents. As these are old books, there may be some pages which are blur or missing or black spots. If it is multi volume set, then it is only single volume. We expect that you will understand our compulsion in these books. We found this book important for the readers who want to know more about our old treasure so we brought it back to the shelves. (Customisation is possible). Hope you will like it and give your comments and suggestions.Original In the Strange South Seas 1908 [Hardcover] Beatrice Grimshaw
- GenresTravel
506 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1907
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 18, 2010
I wrote my MA thesis about Beatrice--it's funny to me to see her listed on Good Reads. She was quite the pioneer, and Anglo-Irish Dublin woman (she did crazy stuff in her youth, like ride a wooden bike around Dublin for 24 hours to break a man's record for sustained bike riding) who conned her way into a writing job on a freighter in 1903 or so and then managed to write loads of books about her experiences over the next 30 or so years. She eventually retired to Australia's Gold Coast. She had nor children, so it largely forgotten in the history of women's writing and travel literature. Lots of fascinating issues with her work as it relates to colonialism, gender and identity.
October 12, 2023
For the most part, travel writer and novelist Beatrice Grimshaw provides many an interesting story of her 1904 journey through the South Seas. The best parts are in Tahiti and the Cook Islands. But the descriptions of Tonga and Samoa are fascinating as well. What is a disappointment are the last two chapters on New Zealand.
Grimshaw makes many a comment on the "savages" of the South Pacific. But she doesn't mean them negatively. Quite the opposite. For Beatrice is full of nostalgia for the pre-modern, that sensibility so often found in Western wanderers of the South Seas who believe the Old Ways of the Pacific were not only better than today but superior in many respects to modern European civilization. She finds the character of Polynesians more trustworthy, reliable, and honest than the typical European. It's not a new insight into South Seas life, but Grimshaw is a good writer and a pioneering female travel writer in the region. I admire her steadfastness and gritty determination to get off the beaten path, leave steamers and journey for several months in a schooner dependent on sail and the movement of tides and winds for her arrivals and departures.
The last two chapters are a bit of a problem, because some of the distance Grimshaw observes as an outsider to Polynesian life in most of the book disappears when she gets to New Zealand, which she calls the Britain of the South. She begins to gush, sounding more like a member of the Chamber of Commerce than a finely trained travel writer. And, frankly, what she osbsesses over in New Zealand, geysers and mud pits, bores me to death. She is especially fixated on one geyser, Waimangu, which she keeps calling the "greatest in the whole wide world!" Pfft. There's is something karmic in the fact that this geyser, which only began erupting in 1900, apparently fizzled out in 1908, one year after Grimshaw published her book. I looked it up. Greatest in the whole wide world no more. Maybe there is much I would find interesting in New Zealand. But Beatrice Grimshaw's reports left me cold. The rest of the book, however, makes for quite a trip through time, to when the South Seas could still be experienced in some ways as they had hundreds of years earlier.
Grimshaw makes many a comment on the "savages" of the South Pacific. But she doesn't mean them negatively. Quite the opposite. For Beatrice is full of nostalgia for the pre-modern, that sensibility so often found in Western wanderers of the South Seas who believe the Old Ways of the Pacific were not only better than today but superior in many respects to modern European civilization. She finds the character of Polynesians more trustworthy, reliable, and honest than the typical European. It's not a new insight into South Seas life, but Grimshaw is a good writer and a pioneering female travel writer in the region. I admire her steadfastness and gritty determination to get off the beaten path, leave steamers and journey for several months in a schooner dependent on sail and the movement of tides and winds for her arrivals and departures.
The last two chapters are a bit of a problem, because some of the distance Grimshaw observes as an outsider to Polynesian life in most of the book disappears when she gets to New Zealand, which she calls the Britain of the South. She begins to gush, sounding more like a member of the Chamber of Commerce than a finely trained travel writer. And, frankly, what she osbsesses over in New Zealand, geysers and mud pits, bores me to death. She is especially fixated on one geyser, Waimangu, which she keeps calling the "greatest in the whole wide world!" Pfft. There's is something karmic in the fact that this geyser, which only began erupting in 1900, apparently fizzled out in 1908, one year after Grimshaw published her book. I looked it up. Greatest in the whole wide world no more. Maybe there is much I would find interesting in New Zealand. But Beatrice Grimshaw's reports left me cold. The rest of the book, however, makes for quite a trip through time, to when the South Seas could still be experienced in some ways as they had hundreds of years earlier.
November 24, 2015
This was an adventure itself to reading this book. I got familiar with it during my travel around the world. One of the stops along the way was on the Cook Islands. I met there a lawyer who recommended this book. I am so grateful for this meeting and his recommendation. What a joy! A fantastic story and richness for comparison of the contemporary Rarotongan society. I love this book! Such a wonderful picture of the old times.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews