Island Nights' Entertainments (also known as South Sea Tales) is a collection of short stories by Robert Louis Stevenson, first published in 1893. It would be some of his last finished works before he died in 1894.
It contains three stories:
The dedication was written in January 1892 in a letter to Charles Baxter, Robert Louis Stevenson's friend and adviser, and the book finally published in 1893.[1] The dedication reads:
| “ | To three old shipmates among the islands,
|
” |
All three were Robert Louis Stevenson's fellow cabin passengers on the 1890 Janet Nicholl voyage.[2][3] Harry Henderson was a partner in the firm Henderson and Macfarlane (died 1926, Melbourne); Ben Hird, the supercargo and trader; Jack Buckland a copra trader and original of the Tommy Hadden character in The Wrecker.[4] Jack Buckland’s dedication copy of Island Nights’ Entertainments was inscribed by Stevenson to John B. Buncombe alias Buckland. A character called ‘young Buncombe’ makes a brief appearance in chapter 2 of The Beach of Falesá.[1]