Omai, Tattooed Polynesian, Becomes London Celebrity and Literary Subject
Poets involved
What happened
Omai (Mai), a Society Islands native brought to London by Captain Tobias Furneaux in 1774, became a sensation in Georgian society and was painted by Joshua Reynolds, met by Samuel Johnson and Boswell, and presented at court before returning to the Pacific in 1776. His tattooed body — partially visible in the Reynolds portrait — became an object of intense British fascination and debate about civilisation, nature, and human universality. Omai's presence in London generated a substantial body of literary and journalistic commentary that used his person as a screen onto which European anxieties about culture and empire were projected.
Literary impact
Omai inspired direct literary responses, including a celebrated pantomime 'Omai, or a Trip Round the World' (1785), and is referenced in the poetry and prose of the period as an embodiment of Rousseauian natural nobility. William Cowper and later Robert Southey wrote about Pacific voyages in ways influenced by the Omai phenomenon. His tattooed body made the decorated Pacific Islander a living literary figure in Georgian London, cementing the association between tattoo and romantic alterity that would shape English literature's treatment of non-Western embodiment for a century.
Source: Wikipedia
