In the late eighteenth century, Hawai'i's ruling elite employed sophisticated methods for resisting foreign intrusion. By the mid-nineteenth century, however, American missionaries had gained a foothold in the islands. Jennifer Thigpen explains this important shift by focusing on two groups of women: missionary wives and high-ranking Hawaiian women. Examining the enduring and personal exchange between these groups, Thigpen argues that women's relationships became vital to building and maintaining the diplomatic and political alliances that ultimately shaped the islands' political future. Male missionaries' early attempts to Christianize the Hawaiian people were based on racial and gender ideologies brought with them from the mainland, and they did not comprehend the authority of Hawaiian chiefly women in social, political, cultural, and religious matters. It was not until missionary wives and powerful Hawaiian women developed relationships shaped by Hawaiian values and traditions--which situated Americans as guests of their beneficent hosts--that missionaries successfully introduced Christian religious and cultural values. Incisively written and meticulously researched, Thigpen's book sheds new light on American and Hawaiian women's relationships, illustrating how they ultimately provided a foundation for American power in the Pacific and hastened the colonization of the Hawaiian nation.

The archetypal story of Thomas Kendall, a self-torturing, struggling missionary in nineteenth century New Zealand, is also a remarkable history of cross-cultural experience. Posted to New Zealand in 1814, Kendall was immensely devout but entirely unprepared for dealing with Māori. He nonetheless helped produce the first Māori Grammar, but was hindered by rumours of an affair with a Māori chief’s daughter. Dismissed from his duties in 1823, he continued studying Māori culture until his death nearly a decade later. Long out of print, this work by a leading New Zealand historian tells an absorbing story of the difficulties and dangers of the evangelical mission.

A new hardcover selection of Lord Byron's letters, poems, and journals, tracing his dramatic, scandalous, heroic life and his wide-ranging travels—and timed to the two-hundredth anniversary of his tragic early death George Gordon, Lord Byron, was one of the leading figures of British Romanticism. The Byronic hero he gave his name to—the charming, dashing, rebellious outsider—remains a powerful literary archetype. Byron was known for his unconventional character and his extravagant and flamboyant lifestyle: he had numerous scandalous love affairs, including with his half-sister Augusta Leigh. Lady Caroline Lamb, one of his lovers, famously described him as "mad, bad and dangerous to know." His letters and journals were originally published in two volumes; this new one-volume selection includes poems and provides a vivid overview of his dramatic life arranged to reflect his travels through Scotland, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Albania, Switzerland, and of course Greece, where he died. It contains a new introduction by scholar Fiona Stafford highlighting Byron’s enduring significance and the ways in which he was ahead of his time. Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket. Each title includes an introduction, a select bibliography, and a chronology of the author's life and times.

Includes section with title: Journal of the American Education Society, which was also issued separately.