Mary Evarts Anderson

Mary Evarts Anderson was an American travel writer whose best-known book grew from a family mission journey across the Pacific. In 1863 she accompanied her father, Reverend Rufus Anderson of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, along with her mother, to Hawaii and California. Scenes in the Hawaiian Islands and California was prepared from the notes she kept for friends during that trip and published by the American Tract Society in 1865. Framed for younger readers, the narrative describes sea travel, landscapes, settlements, missionary institutions, and encounters observed along the route. Its perspective reflects the religious aims and assumptions of its publisher, making the book both travel narrative and historical evidence of nineteenth-century American mission culture. The title page uses the shortened byline Mary E. Anderson, a form of Mary Evarts Anderson, who lived from 1838 to 1905. That full name and date range distinguish her from several other writers called Mary Anderson.