The Great Taboo
London: Chatto and Windus, 1892. Hard cover, three quarter leather over attractive marbled boards and bright orange endpapers.
A young British couple are swept overboard and marooned on a South Seas Island with a tribe that performs royal soul transfer, voluntary human sacrifice and cannibalism. The castaways are immediately pronounced “The King of the Rain and the Queen of the Clouds” and honored as gods while marked for ritual death. Featuring a surprising denouement through an ancient talking parrot.
Charles Grant Blairfindie Allen (1848 – 1899) science writer and novelist, gives credit in the preface to Fraser’s The Golden Bough, a comparative study of world mythology and religion, for the elaborate invented Taboo system of law for his fictitious tribe. Not a thoughtful story of first contact with an indigenous people repeatedly referred to as heathen and barbaric non-Christian savages. Good parrot content.
Very good. Light foxing to endpapers. Rubbing to the edges of the boards. Item #225Price: $60.00