Lot 3100: WILLIAMS, JOHN. 1796-1839.

Autograph Document Signed ("J Williams"), 1 p, 12mo, [London], June 10, 1837, being a receipt for payment for 4 copies of Williams's Missionary Narrative from "Mr Rey," mounting residue to verso, lightly toned.

The work pertaining to this receipt is Williams' popular memoir, A Narrative of Missionary Enterprises in the South Sea Islands (1837), which focuses on the Cook Islands and Samoa. Williams was a member of the London Missionary Society who arrived in the Society Islands on November 17, 1817, having stopped at Hobart, Sydney, and New Zealand en route. Over the following years, he successfully introduced Christianity into Samoa, and returned to London in 1834 to publish this work. He then returned to the South Seas, and, only a few months after the date of this document, he was killed and eaten by natives at Erromanga, in the New Hebrides.