One of the earliest books printed in French Polynesia – Hymnbook 1831 E Mau Himene

An excessively rare Hymnal in Tahitian and one of the earliest printed books with a Huahine imprint.

[Hymnal] E mau Himene oia hoi te parau haamaitai i te Atua. [Hymns for the purpose of glorifying God.]  Huahine : Leeward Mission Press 1831

32mo. 134 pages as BL copy although there is one more page printed ‘E Tabula’ at the end of this copy. Uncut. Original brown calf, rubbed and sound. A fine copy in virtually unused condition with many pages uncut.

A fascinating contemporary ink inscription to ffep Printed and bound by the Native Converts.

Only BL, Library of Congress and NSW recorded. Only 2 auction records.

The title page continues ‘Haamori I te Atua ma te oaoa, a haere mai i mua i tona aro ma te himene.’ A literal translation “To worship God with joy and to enter his presence with hymns”

The Leeward Mission Press was established by John Davies and William Ellis, of the London Missionary Society, on the island of Huahine sometime after 1818 when they sailed with the printing press from the island of Mo’orea. [The Leeward islands include Huahine and Bora Bora].

Ellis and Davies took off to the Leeward Islands, together with John Williams, with the original printing press which had been sent from London to Tahiti. Bourne set up a second new press on Tahiti itself.

We know that from this printing press at Huahine, the first books to come off the press were a Gospel of St. Luke and a supply of elementary books “in their own tongue distributed among the people.” We also know that John Davies printed “A grammar of the Tahitian dialect of the Polynesian language.” in 1823 at the Mission Press.

Between 1811 and 1813, some eight LMS missionaries and their families ventured back to the Windward group to settle at Papeto‘ai on Mo‘orea. Most of them, like Nott, Davies, and Bicknell, were fairly accomplished in the language; and the first two had made astonishing progress, even before they left, in translating Old and New Testament histories, hymns, and simple catechisms. Davies had produced the spelling book, already in print, which began to set the principles of Tahitian orthography. Nott working with King Pomare began his translation of the Gospel of St. Luke, printed at Mo‘orea in 1818.

By 1812, in the first sixteen years of its existence, the South Seas mission absorbed some £38,590—no less than 47 percent of total expenditure by the society on its missions in Africa, India, and other parts of the world.

Referemces: Lovett, Richard (1899). The history of the London Missionary Society, 1795-1895. London : Henry Frowde.

Lingenfelter, Richard. Presses of the Pacific Islands 1817-1867. Los Angeles: The Plantin Press 1967