Caribbean Publishing: A Selective Bibliography of British Library Holdings, 1800-1974

Abstract

• This bibliography includes British Library holdings of books that were published in Barbados, British Guiana, Grenada, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, between 1800 and their respective independences: 1966, 1970, 1974, 1962 and 1962. A selective bibliography, there were some important exclusions, crucially, anything that was published by a ‘government printing office.’ However, certain publishers, such as the Argosy Press in British Guiana and The Gleaner in Jamaica, often had government printing contracts, so they have not been fully omitted. The exclusion of these texts was part of a conscious effort to focus on books that were published outside of the colonial state’s direct control. The process of producing this bibliography has given insight into the contours of the Caribbean publishing landscape during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The first Eccles Centre study guide dedicated to Caribbean publishing, the inclusion of a subject index has furthered knowledge of Caribbean historiographical, literary and print trends. As it reveals, history texts, which were the most popular genre, accounted for a quarter of all books published between 1800 and 1974. Likewise, another quarter were literary (poetry, fiction, memoir, folktales and plays). It is significant that half of the publications in this bibliography were historical or literary – it speaks to political and social shifts, encompassing a rapidly growing emphasis on self-discovery and nation-building over this period.