Warner Arundell: The Adventures of a Creole (1838) is a novel by
Edward Lanzer Joseph. Published in the last year of Joseph's life, the
novel claims to be an edited version of the memoirs of Warner Arundell,
a Creole lawyer and doctor from Grenada. A common literary trope of the
time, this grants a modicum of authority to the author while maintaining
his distance from events that may have been drawn from his own
experiences. Believed to be the first novel set in Trinidad, Warner
Arundell: The Adventures of a Creole is a groundbreaking work of
Caribbean literature that continues to inform readers of the Creole
experience in the Americas. "As we entered the town, I was absolutely
rendered giddy by the opulence and grandeur of the shops, the thronging
of the population, and the deafening noise; while the smoky atmosphere,
unlike aught I ever before beheld, weighed down my spirits." When an
encounter with fraudulent lawyers leaves him penniless, he travels to
Venezuela and England to study law and medicine before returning to the
New World in search of fortune. Along the way, he embarks on several
adventures, meets the African-descended side of his family, and falls in
love with a beautiful Venezuelan woman. Originally written to shed light
on the "many abuses in [the] West Indian Colonial System," the novel
has since been recognized as a pioneering work of Caribbean literature
which continues to inform the postcolonial perspective on race, class,
and identity in the British colonial era. With a beautifully designed
cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Edward
Lanzer Joseph's Warner Arundell: The Adventures of a Creole is a
classic of Caribbean literature reimagined for modern readers.
