The Queen’s Diaries

It took a decade for The Diaries of Queen Liliuokalani of Hawaii to finally be published. The result: a stunningly beautiful book that will be used by scholars and lovers of Hawaii for years to come.

David W. Forbes led the effort to gather and annotate the diaries of the last queen of Hawaii, aided by the University of Hawaii’s Marvin “Puakea” Nogelmeier, the Hawaii State Archive’s Jason Achiu, and others.

Honololu-based book designer Barbara Pope played a key role as the project’s fierce and tireless advocate. She eventually found a publisher in the Liliuokalani Trust and distribution through the University of Hawaii Press.

I wish The Diaries had been available as I wrote my book Lost Kingdom: The Last Queen, the Sugar Kings, and America’s First Imperial Adventure. But it was my good luck that David shared with me more than a decade ago some of the early, primary materials he’d gathered – as well as his painstaking transcriptions and annotations.

I’m grateful for his generosity and happy that we’ve stayed in touch as friends and fellow historians. I profiled David for LitHub last week in a piece titled “The Citizen Scholar Who Led the Hunt for Queen Lili’uokalani’s Lost Diaries.”

You can read the story here. It profiles David and describes his his long journey to explore and document nineteenth century Hawaii.