First published in 1788, the immensely popular French novel Paul et Virginie (first published in English the following year) tells the ultimately tragic story of two children, friends from birth as close as brother and sister, living an Edenic life on the island of Mauritius as they approach romantic and sexual awareness, like the characters in the movie Blue Lagoon that it inspired. Here, Cameron costumed neighbor children, Freddy Gould and Elizabeth Keown, as if for one of the amateur theatricals that she presented at her home in Freshwater, on the Isle of Wight.