After his return from leave in 1940, my father began gathering his notes with a view to eventual publication. Unlike his career work in agriculture and botany, this material deals with traditions, customs, ethnology, anthropology and history, and was culled from his reading, his own observations, and his conversations with Fijians.
He kept the notes arranged alphabetically by topic in a small loose-leaf binder. After his sudden death in 1942, my mother gave the binder to his brother Bayard, the person most likely to find it of use. Bayard’s daughter in turn passed it back to me fifty years later. I transcribed it from WLP’s handwriting, and now technology has made it possible for me to give it a sort of publication.
Many of the notes on older sources will undoubtedly be found to be out-dated. It is the personal experiences and interviews which are likely to interest researchers. I am happy to make these available, with the usual provisions about permission to quote. For my own interest, I would also like to hear from users of the notebook.
My ignorance of the Fijian language makes errors likely, and I would appreciate corrections being communicated to me and to the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau. Where appropriate, extensive Fijian passages are included as scanned images.
Some photos relevant to these notes are in WLP’s photo albums, numbered by myself as Albums 5 & 6. These have been sorted and annotated, but await scanning until other commitments permit.
Phyllis Parham Reeve