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. Contents......Page 8 Aknowledgments......Page 10 A Note on the Text......Page 12 Introduction......Page 16 1 From A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbados (1657) ......Page 31 2 From Jamaica Viewed (I661)......Page 46 3 From Friendly Advice to the Gentlemen-Planters of the East and West Indies (1684)......Page 66 4 A Trip to Jamaica (1698)......Page 92 5 A Speech Made by a Black of Guardaloupe (1709)......Page 108 6 The Speech of Moses Bon Sàam (1735)......Page 116 7 From The Speech of Mr. John Talbot Campo–bell (1736)......Page 123 8 The Story of Inkle and Yarico and An Epistle from Yarico to Inkle, After he bad left her in Slavery (1738)......Page 156 9 Poems from Caribbeana (1741)......Page 162 10 The Sugar Cane:A Poem, In Four Books (1764)......Page 181 11 From A General Description of the West–Indian Islands (1767)......Page 276 12 “Carmen, or, an Ode,” in Edward Long’s A History of Jamaica (1774)......Page 330 13 From Jamaica, a Poem, In Three Parts (1777)......Page 341 Notes......Page 356 Richard Ligon's A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbados (1657; second edition, 1673) provides perhaps the best description of any West Indian colony in the seventeenth century. Edited And With An Introduction By Thomas W. Krise. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 341-358) And Index.