The Fale'ula Library: A Collection of Literature Relating to the Philology and Geography of the South Seas

No signatures. Chips to paper spine. Some wear and small tears to margins of wrappers. Some fading and foxing to wrappers.; (305)-343 pages [i.e. a total of 39 pages). Green printed paper wrappers. Page dimensions: 240 x 152mm. A catalogue of titles on the South Sea Islands. After an initial "General" section, the catalogue is arranged firstly by island group, with the titles within each island group arranged alphabetically by author. Full titles are given, along with the publisher, date of publication, and brief pagination. "The theoretical locus of perfection in libraries is a collection of all books so centrally situated, so scientifically indexed and crossed that any student of any subject may find read to his hand and to such intelligence as may have been acquired by him the last statement of results reached along the lines of the inquiry which he is prosecuting. It must be confessed that this conception of the perfect library is so Alexandrine that it would tempt the pasha of the nearest horde of barbarians to sweep down and commit it to the flames [. . .] The following memorandum forms an effective system of reference to the working library of a lifelong student of Polynesia [. . .] First and foremost my studies have been directed to the philology of the Polynesian languages and with particular incidence upon those languages of the central tract of the South Pacific to which I have elsewhere assigned the designation of Nuclear Polynesia." - from the Introduction.; Bulletin of the American Geographical Society. Vol. XLI, No. 5. May, 1909; 8vo.…