A WHALEMAN'S ADVENTURES IN THE SANDWICH ISLANDS AND CALIFORNIA

Chicago: Laird & Lee, 1885. Hardcover. Good. A later edition of one of the earliest pieces of juvenile fiction to be set in Hawai'i - R.M. Ballantyne's The Coral Island: A Tale of the Pacific Ocean (1857) was the first. A volume in the Ocean Life Series. Octavo: 444 p. with [20] p. publisher's ads and textual illustrations. Original brown cloth binding, with decorative blind stamping and gilt titles. Two period inscriptions, one in ink, to a prefatory blank leaf, with a pencil poodling to a blank leaf in the rear. The front hinge is starting. Some general shelfwear, more so to the corners and tips. Not in Forbes.

Originally published by (truncated) Lee & Shepard of Boston in 1871, A Whaleman's Adventures, as the Hartford Courant noted in its review of that year, "is a lively yarn of the regular sea-going order, which goes into all the interesting details and makes every scene live for the readers. The hero runs away, ships on a whaler, makes a fortune in the Islands, marries a beauty and comes back to Boston to astonish his parents and the girl who turned up her nose at him when he was a lad."

Much of this book and the rest of Thomes' prolific output was based on his own adventurous life. Born in Maine and raised in Boston, 14-year-old Thomes (1824-95) shipped out on the Admittance, of Boston, having been inspired by Richard Henry Dana's Two Years Before the Mast. His factual account of his experience cruising up and down the California coast collecting cattle hides, On Land and Sea; or, California in the Years 1843-44-45 was published in 1883. He subsequently was a member of the Boston and California Joint Stock Mining and Trading Co., the first regularly organized company to embark from Boston for the newly discovered California gold fields in January 1849. Thomes returned to Boston via Hawai'i, the Philippines and Australia, a round-the-world trip that provided him with plenty of material for his boys' books.

On his return to Boston he became a newspaper reporter and then long-time editor of Ballou's Monthly magazine. He published his first juvenile, The Gold-Hunters of Australia, in 1869. "He was a writer of note, and is said to have been the author of more successful books than any other man in America," the Boston Globe said in his 1895 obituary. "His works were principally of travel and adventure, written especially for boys. They were full of exciting adventure, genuine, healthy fun, and accurate information of other lands, all woven into narratives of absorbing interest.". (Inventory #: 76488)