A True Tale of Love in Tonga: Told in 23 Engravings and 333 Words

Another book inspired by Gibbings’s travels to Tahiti and the Pacific in 1929 was A True Tale of Love in Tonga (1935). The story contains 23 engravings and 333 words and, as Martin Andrews describes, ‘is based on a Tahitian folk tale’ of a forbidden love affair. The story has a happy ending and Gibbings dedicated the volume to his daughter Brigid who was, at the time, living with her mother, Moira, in South Africa.