An Authentic Narrative of Four Years' Residence at Tongataboo, one of the friendly islands in the south-sea, Who went thither in the duff, under Captain Wilson

FIRST EDITION, engraved frontispiece, engraved map, occasional foxing and offsetting, mostly affecting first few leaves, bookplate of Archbald, Earl of Eglinton, contemporary half maroon morocco, marbled boards, 8vo, London, Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme, 1810.

A Scarce account of the life of George Vason, Nottingham’s Robinson Crusoe.

After Vason completed a building apprenticeship, he was invited to accompany missionaries to introduce Christianity to the newly discovered islanders of the South Seas. He was 24 years old when he arrived at Tongataboo. Despite an uneventful beginning, two British sailors sparked a fight between the locals and the missionaries, killing three and causing the rest to flee. Vason, however, abandoned his European ways and adopted the local customs, clothing and language. He had many tattoos and also practiced polygamy, one of his wives being a chiefs daughter.

After a peaceful few years in which Vason got his own land and taught the natives some cultivation, there were a series of bloody civil wars, culminating in Vason managing to escape with his life by diving from a canoe pursued by the natives.

Despite forgetting the English language after so many years, a British ship picked him up, amazed to find a tattooed Englishman in native dress on their deck. Eventually he was dropped off in New York and worked as a sailor on American ships before returning to Nottingham.