David Forbes

Hardcover, 552 pp.

This comprehensive, annotated, multivolume bibliography is a record of all printed works touching on some aspect of the political, religious, cultural, or social history of the Hawaiian Islands-from the first printed notice mentioning the Islands (in a German periodical of January 1780) to the beginning of the twentieth century, when the Islands ceased to be a separate political entity. Volume I covers the period from 1780 to 1830, when exploratory voyages to the northern Pacific had largely concluded and the arrival of improved printing equipment in the Islands resulted in a substantial increase in the number of works printed by the Mission Press in Honolulu.

In addition to books and pamphlets, the bibliography includes newspaper and periodical accounts and single sheet publications such as broadsides, circulars, playbills, and handbills because they often contain the only eyewitness or contemporary description of an important event or individual. Entries pertaining to Captain Cook's Third Voyage dominate the first twenty years of the bibliography. They reflect the profound impact of the voyage on both the Hawaiian culture and on nineteenth-century European thought.