Product Description

Every man of humanity must wish that slavery, even in its best and most mitigated form, had never found a legal sanction, and must regret that its system is now so incorporated with the welfare of Great Britain as well as of Jamaica, as to make its extirpation an absolute impossibilitiy, without the certainty of producing worse mischiefs than the one which we annihilate. Matthew Lewis is best remembered as the author of the sensational Gothic novel The Monk (1796). He was also a slave-owner, inheriting two large plantations and visiting Jamaica twice in 1815-16 and 1817-18, primarily to investigate the living and working conditions of his slaves. His anecdotal record, the Journal of a West India Proprietor, was not published until 1834, nearly twenty years after his death from yellow fever on the second return voyage. Warmly praised by Coleridge, the Journal's vivid descriptions and lively, self-deprecating tone make it one of the most readable accounts from a slave-owners perspective of plantation life. Yet, although Lewis emerges as a humane and enthusiastic chronicler, his omissions are as significant as the carnivalesque vignettes he sketches, and, for all his geniality, he is unable to break through the framework of imperialist discourse. Situated between the eradication of slavery under British imperialism in 1807 and emancipation in 1834-1838, the Journal of a West India Proprietor records a colonial encounter, between slave-holder and slaves, at a significant historical moment. This unique edition provides full contextual background and includes Lewis's verse narrative The Isle of Devils, as well as a telling last letter and extract from his papers.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #665646 in Books
• Published on: 2008-07-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 347 pages

About the Author
Judith Terry is Senior Instructor in the English Department at the University of Victoria, British Columbia.

Customer Reviews

Fascinating account from a slave-owner's perspective
Matthew Lewis is a good writer. This account of his travels to the West Indies and his management of his plantations there is therefore worth reading for its own sake as a fascinating piece of literature. For anyone interested in writings about slavery it is also an invaluable document. Lewis was keen to behave well to his slaves, but his attitude towards them is too clearly constrained and conditioned by the prejudices of his time. I would encourage anyone intending to read this journal to read something like Olaudah Equiano's or Mary Prince's accounts of the life of a slave. Such writings put into perspective Lewis's attempts to justify the owning of slaves, as well as pointing out the absences in his text which elide and obscure the reality of the harsh and exhausting conditions which even the best-treated slaves were too often forced to endure.

Morality versus Self Interest
Matthew Lewis inherited slave plantations in Jamaica and visited them quite extensively in the early nineteenth century. He supported the abolition of the slave trade but his racism and self-interest made it impossible for him to imagine how his slaves could survive without benevolent proprietors like him, so he opposed their emancipation. Large parts of the journal are really quite contemptible, being devoted to explanations of how noble and paternal he is, and how amusing or tiresome are the ways that his slaves behave. It is however an interesting and salutory read, and I think you should read it, lest you forget how limited were the aims of much of the middle and upper classes with regard to slavery: they simply deplored the brutality, but equality and freedom were issues they could no more contemplate for blacks in the West Indies than they could for the labourers on their farms and in their mills in Britain. There are lessons here that have an echo today- PETER SANDERS