English novelist MATTHEW GREGORY LEWIS (1775-1818) earned the nickname
"Monk" Lewis after the success of his novel The Monk. But here, in this
nonfiction work, he dramatizes, often in humorous and insightful
fashion, his two year-long stays on the island of Jamaica, in 1815-6 and
in 1817. Lewis died at sea the next year returning from the West Indies,
which hardly seems surprising when one reads his descriptions of the
dangerous Atlantic crossing, when wicked weather and dying livestock
meant to serve as food threatened all aboard. But his joy in the beauty
of his estates in Jamaica and his enjoyment of the people--both native
and colonial--he encountered there is palpable. As a journal of
plantation life during slavery, too, it serves as a potent firsthand
document of significant historical import. Readers of fiction, history,
and personal diaries will delight in this often overlooked work of
early-19th-century literature.