By reef and palm: Sexual politics and South Seas tales

Abstract

At the end of the nineteenth century one of Australia's most popular writers wa George Lewis 'Louis' Becke. Some hailed him as the 'Rudyard Kipling of the Pacific'. Although these days Becke is little known, during the course of his writing career between 1894 and his death in 1913, he published some thirty-five books. His speciality was the south sea tale. Becke's stories, I will argue, provide some insight into Australian gender relations at the end of the nineteenth century...