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Caribbeana

An Anthology of English Literature of the West Indies, 1657-1777

Caribbeana

An Anthology of English Literature of the West Indies, 1657-1777

Although the colonies in the West Indies were as important to the expanding British empire as those in North America, writings from the British West Indies have been conspicuously absent from anthologies of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British literature. In this first literary anthology dedicated to the region, Thomas W. Krise gathers important but little-known descriptions, poems, narratives, satires, and essays written in and about this culturally rich and politically tempestuous region.

Caribbeana offers invaluable period commentaries on slavery, colonialism, gender relations, African and European history, natural history, agriculture, and medicine. Highlights include several of the earliest protests against slavery; a superb ode by the Cambridge-educated Afro-Jamaican poet Francis Williams; James Grainger’s extended georgic poem, The Sugar Cane; Frances Seymour’s poignant tale of the Englishman Inkle who sells his Indian savior-lover Yarico into slavery; and several descriptions of the West Indies during the early years of settlement.

358 pages | 1 map | 6 x 9 | © 1999

History: American History, British and Irish History, Discoveries and Exploration

Literature and Literary Criticism: American and Canadian Literature

Table of Contents

Introduction
A Note on the Texts
1. Richard Ligon
From A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbados (1657)
2. Edmund Hickeringill
From Jamaica Viewed (1661)
3. Thomas Tryon
From Friendly Advice to the Gentlemen-Planters of the East and West Indies (1684)
4. Edward Ward
A Trip to Jamaica (1698)
5. Anonymous
"A Speech Made by a Black of Guardaloupe" (1709)
6. Anonymous
"The Speech of Moses Bon Saam " (1735)
7. Robert Robertson
From The Speech of Mr. John Talbot Campo-bell (1736)
8. Frances Seymour
"The Story of Inkle and Yarico" and "An Epistle from Yarico to Inkle, After he had left her in Slavery" (1738)
9. The "Ingenious Lady" of Barbados
Poems From Caribbeana (1741)
10. James Grainger
The Sugar Cane: A Poem, In Four Books (1764)
11. John Singleton
From A General Description of the West-Indian Islands (1767)
12. Francis Williams
"Carmen, An Ode," From A History of Jamaica (by Edward Long) (1774)
13. Anonymous
From Jamaica, a Poem, In Three Parts (1777)
Notes

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