The reflections of Lady Nugent,wife to the island’s governor in the first years of the 19th century, provide a fascinating window on the colonial mindsetMore from the Guardian Reading groupThe Long Song is a book that gives voice to the silent black majority who endured slavery in Jamaica. There are no surviving narratives written by those slaves, and so it fills an necessary gap. It does not,however, exist in a vacuum. There were contemporary books written approximately life on the island. Levy drew on these while writing her novel and I thought it would be interesting to terminate our peruse at Long Song by looking at one of the principal sources we have from that time: Lady Nugent’s Jamaica Journal.
I’ve read it so you don’t have to. You’ll be pleased to hear that you’ve missed a lot of material approximately “excessive heat” and dinner parties – although, and in truth,it’s surprisingly well written, sometimes even elegant. Lady Nugent is a sharp observer and a helpful-humoured writer, and even whether there’s much approximately her that today seems strange and difficult.
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Source: theguardian.com