Women writing the West Indies, 1804-1939

"This study of previously unknown or marginal West Indian writing by women, queries the accepted wisdom that women's voices were absent from the narrative record until the late twentieth century. It demonstrates that while only a few texts by non-white women have survived, an eclectic body of work by white women - expatriate, resident and creole - does exist. Surveying a sample of fascinating material from novels, stores and homilies, memoirs, letters, travel journals and autobiographies, the book focuses on who these women were, and what kind of narratives they produced. It also asks whether these can be subsumed under a single classificatory label, "West Indian women's writing," and how the narratives construct the region, for those at home and those at the centre, during a particularly important period in the formulation of West Indian and English identities."--BOOK JACKET.