'A Paradise of the Gods. Writings and Drawings of Handley Bathurst Sterndale’ (2020) is an unpublished digital edition edited by J.J. Overell. In 1870, Handley Bathurst Sterndale worked as a surveyor on the island of Upolu, Samoa, for the German trading company Goddefroy & Sohn. In this capacity, he made an expedition across Upolu, making notes and sketches about the journey as he went. In 1871, on Motu Kotawa on the islet of Pukapuka atoll in the Cook Islands, he worked these notes into the manuscript ‘Upolu; or, A Paradise of the Gods’, and worked his sketches into finished drawings. Some accounts are not his first hand observations and others are demonstrably wrong. Sterndale sought to have the manuscript published, but was unsuccessful in finding a publisher before his death in 1878. After his death, it was listed in a catalogue among the publications of Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington of London, but the manuscript never made it to print. It is now available as PMB MS 1442.

The original notebooks have since been lost, but the surviving manuscript and drawings have been passed down to Sterndale’s descendants. This collection brings together 73 of Sterndale's drawings of Samoa, Cook Islands and other islands of the Pacific. The images were digitised by photographer Rod Howe. The images are of scenes witnessed or imagined on his journey, including plants and animals, people, nature and village life.

The letter concerns the state of affairs in Rarotonga as a result of the mistakes made by Mr Moss.

Walter Edward Gudgeon (1842-1920) succeeded F.J. Moss as British Resident in the Cook Islands in September 1898. On the annexation of those islands by New Zealand in 1901, he became the first Resident Commissioner. He held this post until 1909.
The papers are entitled:

1. The Activities of Walter Moss in the Pacific or the Eccentricities of a British Resident, (43 pp. typescript)
2. Cook Islands Maori Genealogical Tables (15pp. Mss and typescript)
3. The Kingdom in the Pacific (20 pp. typescript)
4. Letter to Lord Ranfurly of September 20, 1898 (3 pp. Mss)
5. The L.M.S. in the South Seas (6 pp. typescript)
6. The London Mission: Its Policy and Peculiarities (14 pp. typescript)
7. The London Mission Society in the Cook and Northern Islands (21 pp. typescript)
8. Message to the Cook Islands Parliament dated September 26, 1898 (3 pp. Mss).