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Hard cover, 8vo, in red cloth, gilt with the state symbol of Hawaii to front board, titles in gilt to spine, top edge stained red, with tissue-guarded frontispiece portrait and other black and white reproductions, 167 pp. (The Limited Edition is not numbered.) Condition: Near Fine. One spot to rear board. Inscribed in old ink by the Author on the ffep, dated 1931. One page corner turned and written on in preface in old ink. One pinhead sized rub-through to top edge front board. One plate with small soiling at one edge. Generally very clean. At least one page unopened. **An introductory family genealogy lays out Mr. Pitman's descent, on his mother's side, from a line of Hawaiian chiefs and monarchs dating back hundreds of years. His father, Benjamin Cox Pitman (1815-1888), sailed to Hawaii from Salem, Massachusetts, in the 1820's, first running a chandlery catering to the whaling fleet, establishing the first Volcano House tourist attraction on the cusp of Mount K?lauae. He married Chiefess Kinóole o Liliha, who possessed feudal right to a great deal of land around Hilo, yielding coffee, arrowroot and sugarcane; Pitman Senior also did well in banking in Honolulu. The Pitman family returned to Boston after Kinoolle's death, whereupon the subject of this book, Benjamin Franklin Pitman would become a director at the L.P. Hollander & Co. department store, founded by his wife's father, in Boston. Some of their upscale womenswear is displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art). The story of Pitman's return to the islands as an adult to "take up" his ancestral titles in1917, is told in a series of correspondence by his wife, Almira. The Author, Almira Hollander Pitman (1854-1939) was notable in the woman's suffrage movement both in Boston, and in Hawaii; her influence is cited as instrumental to legislation protecting women's rights in Hawaii, from meetings conducted on this trip. There is much description of the pageants, receptions and Hawaiian customs surrounding the proceedings, and a section on Hawaiian Mythology. **An interesting firsthand account juxtaposing the notion of Hawaiian feudalism and royalty, and the author's influence on the suffragette movement in that State. Provenance: a laid in notice at the rear of book states it once belonged to Emerson Greenaway, (1906-1990), who was Director of the Free Library, Philadelphia and active in a foreign mission to the Soviet Union on behalf of the American Library Association in 1964. OCLC 3703871.
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