ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with the assumption that among Victorian children there are a number of imagined spaces, all of which have a physical and widely known geographical counterpart. There are also a few imagined spaces that may have a physical geographical counterpart, but the imagined space is for most children the actual space, and the actual space probably is totally unknown. The chapter argues that the South Seas as a geographical space was pretty much terra incognita for lower middle-class and working-class Victorian England and that fact left Victorian children free to create the South Seas as a kind of Neverland. It focuses on the nature of the South Seas that manifested in children's imagination, speculate on what sources might have helped create the imaginary world, and finally, discuss why the imagined world of the South Seas was important.
