The West Indies and the Spanish Main

Although the author Anthony Trollope (1815-82) enjoyed great success as a novelist, he was also an eager and perceptive travel writer. In this account of his voyage to the West Indies and Central America, published in 1859, he recounts the many places he visited, including Jamaica, Cuba, Barbados, Trinidad, Panama and Costa Rica. Trollope brings his eye for detail to these islands at an important time: slavery had been abolished in the British colonies, but persisted in Cuba, and he depicts this complex region and its people with all the vividness of his novels. Though sometimes reflecting the beliefs and prejudices of the Victorian period, the work remains essential and engaging reading for those interested in the nineteenth-century Caribbean. Trollope's writings on North America and on Australia and New Zealand are also reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection.