The Travels of Hildebrand Bowman

A new edition of a fascinating, previously unavailable fantasy of 18th century Pacific exploration.

“Like a hologram, The Travels of Hildebrand Bowman refracts a variety of eighteenth-century concerns. In his remarkable edition, Lance Bertelsen shows how Bowman, inspired by James Cook’s sensational discoveries in the Pacific Ocean, travel literature, Scottish Enlightenment philosophers, and satire both social and political, explores what it means to be human. In this lively satirical allegory of England’s ‘progress’ over the past 200 years, Bowman asks whether an ideal state of nature can actually exist. Do cultural interventions caused by the global circulation of trade destroy what it means to build up? As humanity embraces ever more sophisticated stages of development, do luxury, decadence, and corruption inevitably lead to decline? A wealth of helpful and accessible knowledge illuminates this fascinating, prophetic, genre-defying book, the first fiction set in New Zealand and a major find for eighteenth-century studies.” — Jocelyn Harris, University of Otago

“Part adventure story, part allegory, didactic but never less than entertaining, The Travels of Hildebrand Bowman can be enjoyed on a number of levels. Bowman’s search for Utopia in newly discovered exotic worlds captures the spirit of the Enlightenment imaginatively. For anyone interested in late eighteenth century voyaging and discovery, and in the Old World reaching out towards the New, Bowman’s travels make captivating reading.” —Graeme Lay, Captain Cook Society

The Travels of Hildebrand Bowman (1778) tells the story of a fictional midshipman abandoned in Queen Charlotte Sound, New Zealand, after a battle with Maori that claims the lives of ten of his shipmates. Inspired by an actual event on Captain Cook’s second voyage, Bowman’s adventures take him to increasingly sophisticated cultures—hunter/ gatherer, pastoral/nomadic, agricultural, and commercial—that dramatize stadial history in a Pacific setting. The work provocatively weaves together popular fascination with Cook’s voyages, sensational conceptions of the newly charted Pacific, contemporary ideas on human development and culture, topical satire on London life, and a fanciful castaway story. As an introduction to the cultural connections linking Pacific studies, the Scottish Enlightenment, and eighteenth-century English society and politics, The Travels of Hildebrand Bowman is unique in literary history and unsurpassed as a teaching text. Of equal importance, it marks the birth of a national literature. It is the first New Zealand novel.

Historical appendices provide an exceptionally broad range of materials on the Grass Cove “massacre,” the eighteenth-century stadial theory of historical development, cannibalism, and contemporary depictions of the South Pacific and its indigenous peoples.

• | Author: Anonymous, Lance Bertelsen
• | Publisher: Broadview Press Ltd
• | Publication Date: Nov 21, 2016
• | Number of Pages:
• | Language:
• | Binding: Paperback / softback
• | ISBN-13: 9781554812745
• | ISBN-10: 1554812747