Father Damien: an open letter to the Reverend Doctor Hyde of Honolulu …, 1890

DSM/C 456
Publication: Sydney

During his stay of five months in the then Kingdom of Hawaii from late January until late June 1889, Stevenson visited the Hawaiian Board of Health Leper Settlement at Kalawao on the island of Molokai six weeks after the death there of Father Damien. Father Damien’s courageous life had been celebrated, even in the Australian secular press, in his lifetime. When Stevenson read Hyde’s comments in a denominational paper in Sydney in February 1890 he apparently leapt to his feet in anger. He declared that he must reply at once – must smash the traducer of a dead man for whom he had conceived an ardent admiration. Stevenson printed the book in March 1890 at this own expense with no publisher being identified as Stevenson feared legal action for libel. The printing was done under WM Maclardy at the Ben Franklin Printing Office.

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