Father Damien: An Open Letter to the Reverend Dr. Hyde of Honolulu

Stevenson, Robert Louis, 1850-1894Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 4.0
Word count
31K words
Chapters
4

Tags

English Originals Religion Public HealthHistorical ReappraisalDisease ReliefHumanistic CareMissionary ControversyMoral CourageDocumentary NarrativeDefense LetterHawaiiReligious Conflict

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today. Father Damien: An Open Letter to the Reverend Dr. Hyde of Honolulu by Stevenson. Author: Stevenson, Robert Louis, 1850-1894. Language: English. Class: BX: Philosophy, Psychology, Religion: Christianity: Churches, Church movements. Release Date: Jun 1, 1995

Editor's review

Father Damien: An Open Letter to the Reverend Dr. Hyde of Honolulu is a polemical letter written by Robert Louis Stevenson to defend Father Damien's reputation. Father Damien served for years in the leprosy isolation settlement on Molokai, yet after his death Dr. Hyde questioned and disparaged him. Stevenson responds point by point with what he witnessed and with rigorous logic, his prose indignant yet restrained, possessing both literary power and historical value. The letter is not only an important document in the history of religion and public health but also reveals the tension between fact and prejudice in public discourse. Readers may focus on the author's argumentative method, emotional restraint, and the nineteenth-century missionary and colonial context; it suits readers interested in history, religious ethics, and documentary writing.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. First learn the basic background of Father Damien's service on Molokai, then proceed to the letter itself.
  2. Mark the author's factual statements and emotional expressions while reading to appreciate the restraint of polemical prose.
  3. Compare with other biographies or historical sources about Father Damien to form a multifaceted judgment.
  4. After reading, outline the author's argumentative structure as a reference for nonfiction writing and public reasoning.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4

FAQ

What event prompted this letter? After Father Damien's death, Dr. Hyde made remarks questioning his work and character. Stevenson wrote this open letter to refute him point by point and defend Father Damien's service and sacrifice among leprosy patients; the letter thus emerged from a public controversy.
What background knowledge is needed before reading? It helps to understand the basic situation of the leprosy isolation settlement on Molokai, Hawaii, in the nineteenth century and Father Damien's long service to patients. Some knowledge of the missionary and colonial context of the time will aid understanding of the controversy's setting and the author's emotions.
Is this book a novel or a work of nonfiction? It is an open letter, a polemical nonfiction form, not a novel. It responds based on the author's observations and public facts, with a strong personal stance and emotional coloring; readers should distinguish factual statements from rhetorical expression.
Does the electronic edition include notes or an introduction? The Project Gutenberg edition is a public-domain English ebook and usually provides only the text, without modern notes or an introduction. For historical background and biographical verification, consult related biographies and research materials, or choose a print edition with a guide.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Stevenson, Robert Louis, 1850-1894 Author

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) was a nineteenth-century British writer known for adventure fiction and poetry. His representative work Treasure Island established a classic model for treasure-hunt adventure stories and has circulated widely in many translations; the library also holds the Spanish version La isla del tesoro and the German version Die Schatzinsel: Roman. Another representative work, A Child's Garden of Verses, writes from a child's perspective about play, imagination, and everyday feelings, with fresh language and natural rhythm, and is a common reader in English children's poetry. The library holds as many as 101 of his works, showing the variety of his subjects and forms. Public information is limited, so details of his life and education are not elaborated here; overall, his writing combines thrilling narrative with a lyrical tone, being strongly story-driven yet readable aloud, and has had a lasting influence on later adventure literature and children's literature.