Folio Archives 396: The Beach of Falesá by Robert Louis Stevenson - 1959
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The Beach of Falesá by Robert Louis Stevenson - 1959
This small book is a real humdinger that covers an awful lot in relatively few pages,
Robert Louis Stevenson spent the last few years of his life touring around the Pacific and realised it was not quite the paradise portrayed by many authors. The book is a scathing critique of colonisation and was originally suppressed by the British censor as it attacked the colonisers for their exploitation and miscegenation, amongst many other sins.
The book starts out on a very high note as the newly arrived trader Wilshire is offered a woman to marry and sleep with on his first night. Things then steadily degenerate as the seamier hostile side of life is exposed. The novel combines a moral tale with an exciting adventure, but the casual racism in the story is grating by modern standards.
The 128 page book is introduced by H.E. Bates and contains eleven duotone drawings by Clarke Hutton. The page tops stained brown and it has pictorial brown and white endpapers. The book is bound in green canvas with a cover design in black by Hutton and the spine title runs from bottom to top. It is housed in a brown wood pattern slipcase (with finger hold cut-outs) that measures a mere 22.7x13.1 cm.
My copy has a rather sun faded spine after 65 years.
An index of the other illustrated reviews in the "Folio Archives" series can be viewed here.
This small book is a real humdinger that covers an awful lot in relatively few pages,
Robert Louis Stevenson spent the last few years of his life touring around the Pacific and realised it was not quite the paradise portrayed by many authors. The book is a scathing critique of colonisation and was originally suppressed by the British censor as it attacked the colonisers for their exploitation and miscegenation, amongst many other sins.
The book starts out on a very high note as the newly arrived trader Wilshire is offered a woman to marry and sleep with on his first night. Things then steadily degenerate as the seamier hostile side of life is exposed. The novel combines a moral tale with an exciting adventure, but the casual racism in the story is grating by modern standards.
The 128 page book is introduced by H.E. Bates and contains eleven duotone drawings by Clarke Hutton. The page tops stained brown and it has pictorial brown and white endpapers. The book is bound in green canvas with a cover design in black by Hutton and the spine title runs from bottom to top. It is housed in a brown wood pattern slipcase (with finger hold cut-outs) that measures a mere 22.7x13.1 cm.
My copy has a rather sun faded spine after 65 years.
An index of the other illustrated reviews in the "Folio Archives" series can be viewed here.
