Hiroona: An Historical Romance in Poetic Form

by Horatio Nelson Huggins, Désha Amelia Osborne (Editor)

Overview

With over nine thousand lines of rhyming verse, Hiroona: An Historical Romance in Poetic Form tells the fictionalized story of the “Second Carib War” of 1795–97 between Great Britain and the people then known as the Black Caribs with the aid of France. The poem is the vision of St Vincent-born Anglican priest Horatio Nelson Huggins (1830–95), who blends the official history of the war with local legends collected from those who fought on each side to create an exciting narrative with heroic characters and an almost organic critique of the colonial project in the Caribbean. The Caribs, led by chiefs Duvallè, Chetwayè (based on Chief Joseph Chatoyer) and Chetwayè’s son Warramou, fight to expel the British from the island and regain control. Woven into the narrative is the love triangle of Warramou, Carib princess Ranèe and the Scottish soldier Crayton.

Huggins’s work offers a meaningful contribution to the evolution of a unique kind of West Indian consciousness at the end of the nineteenth century. Hiroona has until recently remained relatively unknown, and this edition will be the first available since its posthumous publication in 1930. The text includes a historical essay that places Hiroona in various contexts and considers its significance to Caribbean literature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789766405717
Publisher:	The University of the West Indies Press
Publication date:	11/30/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

DÉSHA A. OSBORNE is Adjunct Assistant Professor in English, Queens College, City University of New York.

Table of Contents

Notes on Editing
Introduction: Hiroona
Introduction Hiroona Discovered
Canto I Early History of St Vincent
Canto II Mutterings of Coming War
Canto III French Intrigue and War Begins
Canto IV A Carib Raid
Canto V Ranèe
Canto VI The Caribs Sweep All Before Them
Canto VII Caribs Repulsed: Chetwayè Falls
Canto VIII Victory Fluctuates
Canto IX The War Continues. England’s Star Ascending
Canto X Events of the War: Ranèe Slain
Canto XI Hiroona Falls
Canto XII Hiroona’s Doom
Appendix Full Text of The Holiday
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Acknowledgements

Editorial Reviews

The objective of this work is to make available to scholars and students, in a modern annotated edition, a remarkable Caribbean literary work of the late 1800s, hitherto known to and read by only a handful of scholars. . . . [I]t is beyond question an extraordinary work. And it is also beyond question a Caribbean work. . . . Written long before the emergence of ‘West Indian literature’ in the 1930s, it reflects the kind of literary and cultural world which existed in Trinidad and elsewhere in the late nineteenth century, yet it is unique in its ambition, poetic form and length.”
—Bridget Brereton, Professor Emerita, Department of History, University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago

From the Publisher