ABSTRACT
Focusing on the South Pacific, this project investigates how empire was conveyed to British children through the mid-Victorian boys’ adventure novel by situating the genre in the context of missionary culture. Through an evangelical narrative about the formation of coral islands, the project demonstrates that missionary investments in the socially marginal (the young, the working-class sailor, the Pacific Islander convert) generated new forms of agency that are legible in the mid-Victorian boys’ adventure novel, even as that agency was subordinated to Christian values identified with the British middle class. In reading the mid-Victorian boys’ adventure novel, the work pursues three aims: one, to investigate the overlooked archive of children’s missionary periodicals as a repository of imperial information that resurfaces in the boys’ adventure novel; two, to demonstrate the access British children had to Western representations of the South Pacific through missionary organizations and publications; and three, to venture beyond the well-worn Pacific stereotypes of the savage cannibal and seductive maiden, and attend instead to the Pacific Islander convert. The introduction establishes these objectives and provides context on the boys’ adventure novel, British imperial engagement with the South Pacific, and the central role of the South Pacific in the history of the London Missionary Society.
