Introduction to Children's Literature Circulation in the Caribbean

By Courtney Weikle-Mills

Slavery strongly shaped the path of children’s literature in the Caribbean. Enslaved black children were not allowed to have many experiences associated with childhood; thus Cynthia James, in her landmark essay on the development of children’s literature in the Caribbean, claims that childhood was nearly absent in West Indian society.[i] Early British children’s books from The Governess to Sandford and Merton too argued that the Caribbean was detrimental to healthy development among white children. In such a place, some children’s books insisted, children’s literature could not exist. For instance, at the beginning of A. Selwyn’s The Little Creoles, readers are prompted to pity two (white) children arriving to England from the West Indies because they have seen none of the “charming little narratives” available for children and have only read “Vyse’s Spelling Book”![ii]

Yet archival materials, including newspaper advertisements and missionary records, show that children’s books did travel to the Caribbean. It is true that schoolbooks dominated the landscape—making up over 50 percent of what is discernable from these sources and bringing with them their own views of childhood—but entertaining narratives were on offer, as one advertisement put it, in “great variety.”[iii] While no doubt a large portion of the islands’ largely Afro-Caribbean youth population could not access these texts, records attest that many did come in contact with them, as they served important purposes within agendas to assert and maintain European cultural dominance. This is true particularly after the end of the slave trade and, subsequently, emancipation placed emphasis on black children as crucial to the islands’ future. Meanwhile, rich Afro-Caribbean traditions provided a lifeline for cultural survival, recognizable in the archive as traces that have developed, over time, into vibrant children’s literary initiatives such as those highlighted in the pages of Anansesum, “an online magazine of Caribbean children's and young adult literature by adults and children.”[iv]

Archival sources show that the children’s book trade in the Caribbean was driven by at least two forces: commerce and evangelism. Tradespeople on most islands hawked imported books alongside their other wares; an advertisement published in Somerset, Bermuda in 1784, for instance, announced the availability of “Newbery’s books for children” along with clothes, furnishings, paper products, and “many other Articles too tedious to mention.”[v] Gradually, merchants specializing in book distribution and printing emerged, such as the prolific Henry James Mills of Port of Spain, Trinidad, best known for publishing Warner Arundell: The Adventures of a Creole (1838), a contender for the first European-authored novel about the Caribbean and published in the region. Mills also printed The Port of Spain Gazette from 1829-1843, ran a circulating library, and took a particular interest in selling children’s books, including, for instance, several works written under the popular American pseudonym Peter Parley (a.k.a. Samuel Goodrich).

Evangelists, including Moravians, Methodists, Baptists, Lutherans, and Anglicans, likewise had a strong interest in circulating children’s books, especially to Afro-Caribbean people pre- and post-slavery for the purposes of conversion. They often wrote to their home congregations and to umbrella organizations such as the British and Foreign School Society (BFSS) begging for “books, books, books, and materials,” as one missionary put it.[vi] Although the two forms of circulation to some extent targeted different audiences—ads in Caribbean newspapers mostly addressing white colonists with means and missionaries particularly addressing Afro-Caribbean youth—likely these two forms of circulation were not discrete. It is easy to imagine that missionaries frequented book and general stores in search of appropriate materials when they had the requisite donations.

Patterns of circulation in the British Caribbean reveal two interesting spikes of activity among book importers, a smaller one in the decade from 1810-20 and a larger one from roughly 1824-1842. The timing of the activity is striking in that Britain outlawed the slave trade in 1807, an event that historian Colleen Vasconcellos has argued changed the ways that white colonizers viewed enslaved children. Whereas before the end of the trade, children were considered less valuable byproducts of adult slavery, afterwards they were considered integral to the future of slavery, because adult slaves could no longer be purchased legally. Some enslavers, such as the Jamaican planter (and Gothic author) Matthew Lewis, therefore self-interestedly pursued marginal improvements in conditions and considered education as a way to promote subordination and adherence to British ideas of virtue among enslaved youth.[vii]

From 1824 to 1833, the British government debated and then outlawed slavery in its colonies altogether, instituting a so-called apprenticeship period lasting from 1834-1838, in which former slaves were required to work for their masters without compensation, with a purportedly reduced workload in order to make time for education and conversion. The large spike in children’s literature circulation during this period makes sense given these goals, though in some cases, long lists of children’s books in papers with a primarily white audience, such as The Port of Spain Gazette, seem meant to maintain the gap between white and black island residents by creating Eurocentric definitions of culture and education.

Understanding the big picture of Caribbean circulation helps contextualize the circulation of specific books, as well as archival items that show how Afro-Caribbean people preserved cultural traditions brought from Africa and elaborated during slavery.

[i] Cynthia James, “From Orature to Literature in Jamaican and Trinidadian Children’s Folk Traditions.” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly. 30.2 (2005): 165.

[ii] A. Selwyn, The Little Creoles; Or the History of Francis and Blanche. A Domestic Tale (London: Printed by and for William Cole, 1820), 34.

[iii] Ad by Andrew Coltart, Antigua Observer (published as The Antigua Observer.) (St. John's, Antigua and Barbuda), October 19, 1848, 3.

[iv] “About Anansesem.” Anansesem. Web. Accessed 24 May 2021. <www.anansesem.com> The closing of Anansesem during the Covid-19 pandemic demonstrates the vulnerability that children’s publications in the Caribbean face—and their need for support. 

[v] Bermuda Gazette, and Weekly Advertiser (St. George's, Bermuda), July 10, 1784, 2.

[vi] 57th Report of the British and Foreign School Society (1862), 18.

[vii] See Matthew Lewis, Journal of a West India Planter, as well as Courtney Weikle-Mills “The Obscure Histories of Goosee Shoo-Shoo and Black Cinderella: Seeking Afro-Caribbean Children’s Literature in the Nineteenth Century” in Children’s Literature 47 (2019): 57-78.