Warner Arundell, the Adventures of a Creole

Of all the islands in the Caribbean, Trinidad has experienced the most varied ethnocultural and linguistic history. Its relatively brief period of plantation slavery and extent of racial mixing have generated a wide range of literary responses. Previous examinations of Trinidad’s literary roots have largely dismissed works written prior to 1920. The first work in the series is Warner Arundell, the Adventures of a Creole, originally published in 1838. This was the first novel set at least partly in Trinidad and possibly the first Caribbean novel in English. This extremely well written novel provides a good read as it chronicles the adventures of Warner Arundell, a white Creole of British descent, born in Grenada and brought up in Antigua and Trinidad. After being defrauded by lawyers, he studies law in Venezuela and medicine in England, then goes to seek his fortune. After many adventures, he is reunited with the coloured branch of his family and his Venezuelan love. The originally published novel has been heavily annotated and the contextualized edition of the original text makes it useful to scholars. The book is of particular interest to students and faculty of Caribbean literature, Commonwealth literature, postcolonial literature, world literatures in English, nineteenth-century literature, Caribbean history and African American studies.