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RULES ADOPTED BY THE BOARD OF REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HANAll HAY 21. 1948 VITH REGARD TO THE REPRODUCTION OF MASTERS THESES ia> No person or corporation may publish or reproduce in any manner, without the consent of the Board of Repents, a thesis which has been submitted to the University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for an advanced degree, tbj ho individual or corporation or other organization may publish quotations or excerpts from a graduate thesis without the consent of the author and of the University. LQOIS BSCKEi A STUDY A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISIOH OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAHAll IS PARTIAL FULFILLUEHT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS AUGUST 1957 By Margaret Anne Ingraa ¿1a) . ^ * —5 O CE5 6 & no.15' pSw cor,? Nfl ^ TABLE OF CGMTENTS PREFACE ............................................................ 1 FRONTISPIECE! LOUIS BSCJiE.............................. After page ill CHAPTER I. LOUIS BECKE, THE MAN The Tine and Place . 1 His L i f e .................................. .. 4 Hoj&e Tie« .................................... i The First V o y a g e ........... .......... .......... 6 Pacific Odyssey ........... ......7 Retrospect ...... 14 CHAPTER II. HIS WORKS Classification . ......................... 21 Chronological Description .......................... 22 Develop« nt of Autobiographical Tendency ....... 59 Chronological Description Continued.......... 42 Conclusion ........ ............. ................. 60 CHAPTER III. KI3 CRAFTSMANSHIP The Scene ...... ................ ........62 The Thanes ......... ........................ 68 The P l o t s ................. 72 The Characters ................................. 82 C o n c l u s i o n .......................................... 95 CHAPTER IV. m S VALUS Conclusion ........ ........ 96 BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary S o u r c e s .......................... ........... 99 Secondary Sources ...................... .. 101 Uo *"1 23 w cO N* "I4 I _c £ E ra PREFACE In making this study of Louis Becke, Australian author of talas set principally in the Pacific Islands, I was dependent to a great ex­ tent on his works themselves. Very little secondary material was avail­ able: three magazine articles, five brief prefaces in collections of his tales, sketchy or chance allusions in three or four other books — these were my secondary references during the writing of most of this paper. With such a paucity of critical material, it was impossible to support my opinions or deductions invariably by reference to an authority. I have tried to avoid broad statements and to give ample supporting evidence from the works themselves, hut I felt that constant repetition of qualifying phrases such as "probably,■ "in my opinion," etc, would only vitiate the strength of the deductions thus made and supported. It is to be under­ stood throughout the paper, then, that unless reference to an authority is cited, the opinions advanced and the statements made are my own. While the second and third chapters of this thesis were still in rough draft, and while the first chapter, on Backs'a life, was still in outline, further information, biographical and critical, arrived from Australia. For this I an deeply indebted to Miss Ida Lee son, the Librar­ ian, and to the Board of Trustees of the Mitchell Library of Sydney. My letters of inquiry to .the Bon. Bertram Sydney Stevens, Premier and Colo­ nial Treasurer of Sew South Wales, (whom 1 supposed to be the Bertram Stevens of The Lone Band, said to have been Backe's literary exacu tor1), to Mr. Ernest R. Pitt of the Melbourne Public Library, and to Miss Lesson, brought full and helpful response; and upon ay application the Board of Trustees of the Public Library of Mew South Wales granted permission to have copies made for my use of certain early letters from Becks to his T. J. C. "Australasian Literature," The Ration, XCVII, (July 10, 1915), 50. ii ■other, newspaper interviews, and agreements between Becke and his pub­ lishers, all housed in the Itttchell Library, tt.es Leeson must have spent « o h tine and careful thought in selecting the naterial which fitted ny description of needs. It is difficult to express ny gratitude adequately • for the courtesy and co-operative spirit shows hy tha .Tor Hr. Ttevorjs and these people of the Public Library ays ten of Australia. The copied naterial, referred to throughout the paper as "Typescript," did not necessitate changing, except in a few minor points, either the plan or the text of this paper. It was gratifying, however, to find certain deductions substantiated by evidence outside the works of Beoke themeelves, especially *hen, as in tho discussion of the part played by Bscxe and Jeffery respectively in their collaborations, the internal evidence was somewhat thin.2 The biographical information was of great interest — especially Beoke*s letters to his mother, written, most of then, during hie stay on Nanomaga in 1880-1881. Unfortunately this splendid record covers only a year or two; for the mast part authentic dates and means of securing an accurate chronicle of his life are unavailable now. The Earl of Pembroke included n brief biographical sketch In his Introduction to Becks's _§y Beef and palm, and most subsequent writers have baaed their comments on hie work. It is merely an account of Becks'• various ventures and activities, incomplete, lacking sufficient dates to make it an adequate framework on which to build with material gleaned from his stories. Furthermore, it is bassd almost entirely upon a letter which Beoke wrote to Pembroke, evidently at the time when the latter was about to prepare his Introduction to Becks's first collection of tales. Pembroke used most of this material aB Beats presented it, much of it word for word, merely changing it from the first to the third person. Tl Chapter II, 37, 47. ill These autobiographical notes are so* in the Mitchell Library of Sydney, and a copy of then is in the University of Hawaii Library. They are written in Becks»s casual, unanalytical style, and night easily be erroneous in chronology, particularly since the conflicting dates he gives in nany of his stories suggest that he fell into the island habit of let­ ting tine slip unnoticed through his fingers. CHAPTER I LOUIS BECKJS, THE HAH The Time and Place To orient George Louis Backs in point of tine with better known figures of the literary world, one has only to remember that he was al­ most the exact contemporary of Joseph Conrad. Conrad was bora Dec saber 6, 1857) Be eke, according to the best authorities available, June 18, 1855,1 although June 17, 1857^ and the year 1348" are also given as the date of his birth. The year 1865 M e n to fit with autobiographic accounts of his life, however, and so is probably the correct date. These authors' first I iff publications, Conrad's Alnayer's Polly and Becks's Beef and Pain, ware published the sane year, 1894, fay the sane publisher, T. Fisher Unwin of London. While Conrad was writing novels of the eastern islands of the China Sea, Becks was producing volume after volume filled with tales of Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia. His Pacific Tales. Edward Barry. and The Strange Adventure of James Shervinton were contemporary publica­ tions with Conrad's The Bigger of the Marcia b u s . Lord Jim, and Youth. Conrad died in 1924, Becke eleven years earlier, in 1915. fr Becke preceded Stevenson fay about twenty years as resident, or ra­ ther as wanderer, among the Pacific Islands, for he left his Australian home, according to his own account, in March, 1869, when about fourteen years old, touched at Burutu in the Tubual Group on his way out to California, and by 1870 was already started on his career as business man (ha varied his occupations) in the South Sea Islands.4 Stevenson began the tour which was to end in voluntary exile in 1888, but his South Sea TI George Msckanesa, Introduction, Tales of the South Seas, by Louis Becke, vii. 2. Publisher's Bote, Bully Bayes. Buccaneer, fay Louis Becke. 5. "South Sea Hovelist," Wellington Dominion,(Sept. 9, 1908), Typescript. 4. Autobiographic Hotea, Typescript The Adventures of Louis Blake, 2, 17, 89 ff. stories and A Footnote to History preceded Beene's publications, for Stevenson died the year By H»>f and Palm mas published. It is interesting to note, however, that although Stevenson's The Ebb Tide was published in 1894, a year before the appearance of Becke *s collection entitled The Sbb- of the Tide, Becke disdained any indebtedness to Stevenson for the title of his book. In a letter to the Editor of the Standard, written in London in 1897, Becke said: Sir - In his kindly criticiea of a book of nine entitled "Pacific Tales" your Scviewer says, "If there had never been a Hebert Louis Stevenson, never an Attw&ter nor a Huish, the public would probably have paid much less attention to kin" (myself) "than he deserves. This is not saying that Mr. Becke is in any direct sense indebted to Stevenson, save, perhaps, for the title of one of his volumes." The volume of mine to which your Reviewer refers is "At the Ebbing of the Tide," a collection of stories which was published by Mr. Fisher Unwin two years ago. I sent them to hiw from Australia, »«i said in the accompanying letter, "Use your o n judgment as to the title of the book." Mr. Unwin chose as a title "The Ebbing of the Tide," which was the title of one of the stories in the volume) and this story, under that title was written by me and published by the Sydney Bulletin two years before Mr. Stevenson's story of "The Ebb Tide" appeared, either serially or in book form. Mr. Unwin will corroborate this, as cell as the Editor of the Bulletin.

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