Crusoes of Sunday Island by Crusoes of Sunday Island

Crusoes of Sunday Island by Elsie K. Morton.

Publisher: Reed, 1964. First New Zealand edition. SCARCE.

Good hardback with jacket. A little fading and bumping to edges. Ffep has been removed. No inscriptions, minor foxing. Jacket is rubbed, marked and chipped, with a couple of closed tears. 189 pages with photos.

From the blurb "This is a desert-island story. It has elements of both Robinson Crusoe and The Swiss Family Robinson, but the special fascination of this story is that it is absolutely true. "It is the story of Tom Bell, an adventurous New Zealander who was a born pioneer. He wanted more than anything else to find an uninhabited Pacific island, take his wife and children there, become a planter, and open up a trading station. In 1878 he and his family settled on Sunday Island, some six hundred miles north of Auckland. "From the very start the family had to live the life of true desert islanders. The food they had bought from the captain of the trading schooner who had brought them to the island proved to be rotten. They had been cheated and deserted, for the schooner never returned, and it was to be another year before they saw anyone from the outside world. But they survived and increased, raising a family of ten in isolation, and making an Eden of their island. "Their story was told to the author by Bessie Bell, who was nine years old when the family landed on the island. Miss Morton has done full justice to a magnficent opportunity. Like the two great desert-island classics, this is a book for everyone. "Elsie K. Morton is one of New Zealand's best-known women writers.

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