Almost all Pacific histories, ethnographic studies and literary analyses begin by commenting that the Pacific is a very large ocean. To scholars unfamiliar with Pacific studies this seems a rather obvious observation. Why not begin by saying that the Pacific is a very wet ocean or a very blue ocean? As I conducted my own research on the islands, however, I began to understand how this seemingly obvious statement underpinned so many of the choices, both rhetorical and theoretical, that defined my work. The Pacific Ocean covers a total area of over 69 million square miles, almost one third of the earth's surface, touching multiple continents and containing a constantly changing number of islands with a highly mobile and diverse set of populations. As a result, scholars refer to the ocean's vastness by way of an apology: ‘Please forgive what I cannot begin to cover; the peoples and places that my account sacrifices to present one study, one viewpoint, one glimpse into a vast and everchanging area. The Pacific is a very large ocean.’ There are so many Pacific stories to be told; I can only examine a microscopic portion of a vast network that still has many avenues that should and hopefully will be explored. By necessity, this book focuses on a very narrow vision of the Pacific as it attempts to trace the story of British literature produced in the long nineteenth century outside the colonial centres of Australia and New Zealand. By narrowing my project to focus only on the impressions of one country and time period, I unsurprisingly exclude many interesting and important perspectives that I hope future scholars will trace, and in defence of the choices I have made, I offer the following rationale: the Pacific is a very large ocean.

Despite the vast size of the Pacific, or perhaps because of it, the ocean has always been home to a unique breed of explorer. While there is a great deal of debate amongst anthropologists as to where and when the earliest travellers from the Asiatic mainland headed out into the vast ocean emptiness in search of new horizons, no one argues that such an undertaking was anything less than monumental.