author
H. M. Dauncey
1863–1932
Best known for Papuan Pictures, this British missionary-author wrote from decades of experience in Papua, blending travel observation, mission work, and close attention to everyday life.
1 Audiobook
Papuan Pictures
by H. M. Dauncey
About the author
Born in 1863, H. M. Dauncey was the Reverend Harry Moore Dauncey, a British missionary associated with the London Missionary Society. He served in Papua New Guinea from 1888 until his retirement in 1928, and his writing grew out of those many years living and working there.
His best-known book, Papuan Pictures (1913), presents scenes of life in Papua for readers back home, describing local customs, education, games, and the daily work of the mission field. Today the book is often read both as a travel-and-mission narrative and as a window into how early 20th-century British writers described Papua and its people.
Dauncey died in 1932. While detailed personal information is limited, the record that survives shows a writer whose published work was closely tied to long firsthand experience in Papua and to the missionary world in which he spent most of his adult life.