author
George Turner
1817–1891
Drawn to the South Pacific as a missionary, he became one of the best-known early writers on Samoa and Polynesia. His books blend travel, observation, and 19th-century missionary history in a way that still gives readers a vivid sense of the islands he knew.
1 Audiobook
Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before
by George Turner
About the author
Born in Ayrshire, Scotland, George Turner was educated at the University of Glasgow and trained for the ministry before joining the London Missionary Society in 1840. He spent many years in the South Pacific, especially in Samoa, where he worked as a missionary and became closely engaged with local language and culture.
Turner is best remembered as the author of Nineteen Years in Polynesia (1861) and Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago and Long Before (1884). Those books helped introduce many English-speaking readers to Samoan life, beliefs, and history, while also reflecting the missionary outlook of his time.
Because he wrote from long personal experience in the islands, his work has remained of interest not only to general readers but also to historians of the Pacific. Even when modern readers approach his writing with caution about its 19th-century perspective, it remains an important firsthand record of Samoa and the wider Polynesian world.