Warner Arundell: The Adventures of a Creole

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.