Voyaging in the Pacific
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2024-05-22
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Oxford Handbook of British Romantic Prose
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Oxford University Press
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School of Culture and Communication
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Coleman, D. (2024). Voyaging in the Pacific. Morrison, R (Ed.). Oxford Handbook of British Romantic Prose, (1), pp.139-156. Oxford University Press.
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Open Access
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Abstract
Voyage literature enjoyed immense popularity in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, second only to fiction in selling power. This chapter examines three voyages to the Pacific published in London by John Hawkesworth (1773), George Keate (1788), and John Martin (1817). These were not authors but professional literary men who edited, rearranged, compiled, and often embellished the journals, logbooks, and charts of the original travellers. My aim is to see how each of these editors produced the experience of voyaging textually for metropolitan audiences. Generically, many problems and questions surrounded these works. Were they merely fictions composed of lying, impersonating, and ventriloquizing, or were they superior works precisely because they were not novels? Did these editors prompt their readers to consider the impact of Europeans on the local cultures and identities of Pacific nations? Finally, how far was Britishness the norm by which Pacific cultures were measured?