PATON, Maggie Whitecross - Lot 127

PATON, Maggie Whitecross Letters and Sketches from the New Hebrides. Third edition. London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1895. In-8 (203 x 136 mm) with a heliogravure frontispiece, XI pp, 1 f.n.ch., 382 pp, 1 f.n.ch. of bookseller's catalog. Green decorated percale, smooth spine (publisher's binding). Margaret Paton (1824-1905) was the second wife of pioneer missionary John G. Paton, who left for the Pacific in 1865. They settled on the island of Aniwa in the Vanuatu Archipelago in the Coral Sea, where the couple worked for 41 years as missionaries. His account of life on Aniwa is by turns full of excitement and despair, especially when his children are sent one after the other, for their own safety or for medical reasons, to the family living in Australia. In addition to the frontispiece - a reproduction of a Paton family photo - the book is decorated with 24 figures in the text with illustrations of local characters and homes. Reading copy, spines partially split.