Featured in the photo above is the lovely dust jacket of a romance of the south seas written by Robert Dean Frisbie
and published only three years before the author’s death in 1945 (hardback with
dust jacket). According to Wikepedia,
Frisbie was born in Cleveland, Ohio,
and was an American writer who moved to the south pacific after World War I to
improve his poor health. He settled in Tahiti,
married, and fathered five children. Throughout
his lifetime, Frisbie penned numerous travel articles and stories for U.S.
publications. He maintained friendships
with other writers, and allegedly Charles Nordhoff and James Hall (think, Mutiny on the Bounty) encouraged Frisbie
to write a narrative about his life on Pukapuka (book of the same name published in 1929).
Despite residing in the south pacific and enjoying life as a
writer, Frisbie’s days were not uniformly happy. He married in 1928, at age 32, and his wife bore him
five children before she died in 1939, leaving Frisbie with five young children
to rear on his own. Only three years
later in 1943, Frisbie was diagnosed with tuberculosis, and although he
continued to travel and write, he died in 1948 of an apparent tetanus
infection. His children were raised by
friends and relatives in New Zealand
and Hawaii.
A prolific writer of nonfiction travel articles, Frisbie
published several novels including Amaru. Online research indicates that demand (thus
cost) of PukaPuka is higher than that
for Amaru. Perhaps PukaPuka,
as a memoir, is more sought after. One
of his children, Florence Frisbie, wrote two books, Miss Ulysses of Puka-Puka (Macmillan, 1948) and The Frisbies of the South Seas
(Doubleday, 1959). Be on the lookout for
both books which according to online research are difficult to obtain (costly).
