The Night of Toil A familiar account of the Labours of the First Missionaries in the South Sea Islands: by the Authour of Peep of Day

London: J. Hatchard and Son, 1844. xi (2), 468 [4] pp. Octavo. Original green cloth boards. Engraved frontispiece. Gilt lettering on the spine. Edges are dust soiled. Original coated Victorian end papers. An attractive gift inscription on the front free end paper dated 1845. This volume has light staining and foxing throughout. Illustrated with nine plates, including a map. This book comes with a four page catalogue of works by the publisher. Otherwise, an attractive copy in the original cloth. Like many women at the time, writer Favell Lee Mortimer's books initially appeared anonymously. In this volume, she is credited only as "the author of Peep of Day." Peep of Day was an extremely popular series of children's books; over a half million copies of the original edition were issued. In this volume, the author turned her pen to the history of the English Missionaries in Tahiti. Whilst Mortimer herself never visited Tahiti, she described the South Seas, the 1796 voyage, and the motivation of the English missionaries who travelled so far from their homes; she notes that only four of the party were ministers while the rest "understood useful trades". The volume outlines the conversion of some Tahitians, the civil war of 1835, the publishing in 1835 of a Tahitian Bible, and the French taking possession of the island in 1837. 1844