GRAMMAR OF THE HAWAIIAN LANGUAGE

1854. ANDREWS, L[orrin]. GRAMMAR OF THE HAWAIIAN LANGUAGE. Honolulu: Printed at the Mission Press, 1854. [2],156 pp. 8vo., side-sewn, brown cloth back with flexible textured-paper sides. Ink ownership at ffep. This copy is without the folding table, which was apparently not issued in all copies. Leaves are increasingly browned within the text block as they progress toward the center of the volume, though they are all easily readable, with light to heavy foxing in margins throughout, and some slightly bent corners. The cloth has largely worn away at spine; the sides are rubbed and creased at fore-corners. Nonetheless, this is a very good copy of a rare early Hawaiian grammar and imprint. (Judd 324). Andrews (American, 1795-1865) arrived in Hawaii as a missionary in 1828 and he remained there the rest of his life. Within a few years, he was appointed as the first principal of the "mission seminary," where he established a press and printed the first Hawaiian newspaper. Along with his work as a teacher and industrialist, he gave attention to translation of the entire Bible into the Hawaiian language and, for a time (1837), acted as a teacher and interpreter for certain Hawaiian chiefs. Andrews resigned from the Mission in 1841 and entered government service. After his retirement in 1859, he devoted his last years to the study and research of the ancient songs and traditions of the Hawaiian people. Besides the Grammar of the Hawaiian Language, he published a Hawaiian dictionary of some 17,000 words in 1865, on which he had begun work in 1835. (D.A.B.).