Oceania and the Victorian Imagination

Focusing on Oceania’s impact on Victorian culture, most notably travel writing, photography, international exhibitions, literature and the culture of childhood, this collection examines the Victorians’ engagement with the Pacific. Whether intriguing accounts of its exotic peoples, flora, fauna and natural history were enough in and of themselves or whether they provoked a desire to venture forth, Oceania, or the Pacific, loomed large in the Victorian popular imagination.