Edward H. Dodd Jr.; Publisher and Author

Edward H. Dodd Jr., 83, publisher and an author of books about the South Seas. Dodd, the great-great-grandson of Moses Woodruff Dodd, who founded the publishing house of Dodd, Mead in 1839, in 1928 sailed to the South Seas with four Yale classmates and later wrote about the adventure in “Great Dipper to Southern Cross.” That journey was the beginning of his love affair with the Pacific islands. He owned a house on one of the Society Islands, 200 miles from Tahiti, and divided his time between there and his home in Vermont. Dodd wrote five books about Polynesia: “Tales of Maui,” “Polynesian Art,” “Polynesian Seafaring,” “Polynesia’s Sacred Isle,” and “The Rape of Tahiti.” On Monday in Putney, Vt.