By Reef and Palm

By Reef and Palm

A Fictional Journey to the Lands of Paradise

This small collection of "yarns" about life in the Pacific Islands launched Australian author Louis Becke into whirlwind celebrity with its publication in the late 1890s.

A former trader, sailor-and some say even pirate-Becke knew the islands of the South Seas as few authors ever have. His tales force us to behold the exploitative nature of the European impact on the natives and on the land. At the same time, his stories hold lessons about the clashes that occur when cultures are counterpoised in their views, and how each works in its own inevitable way to change the other.

A. Grove Day said of him: "He merits a secure place in the literary history of the Pacific, primarily because his very lack of polish reflects the rude and lawless period in which he lived. . . . In his ability to end a story with some apparently irrelevant afterthought, which somehow sums up the entire yarn, and the age, and the ocean, too, Becke is without comparison."