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Among the first Europeans to encounter and settle on the southeastern coast of New Guinea, members of the London Missionary Society contributed a large corpus of publications concerning indigenous peoples from the mid-1870s until the rise of professional anthropology in the 1920s. While these works focus mainly on the activities and concerns of men, women provide a key index of “civilization” relative to the working British middle class from which most missionaries came. This essay provides a survey of the portrayal of women in this literature over three partly overlapping periods, demonstrating a shift from racialist to moral discourses on the status of Papuan women - a shift that reflects transitions in both missionary and anthropological assumptions during this period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A bibliography on the subject of anthropology is presented which includes the books "Bad Souls: Madness and Responsibility in Modern Greece," by Elizabeth Anne Davis, "The Cult and Science of Public Health: A Sociological Investigation," by Kevin Dew, and "Revolutionary Medicine: Health and Body in Post-Soviet Cuba," by Sean P. Brotherton.

An index to volume 19 of "The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute" is presented.