Montgomery, or, The West-Indian adventurer
Subtitle: a novel
By: by a gentleman, resident in the West-Indies
Publisher: Printed at the Office of the Kingston Chronicle, 1812-13.
Published: 1812
Place of publication: Jamaica
Language: eng
Subjects: History; Fiction; Social life and customs; Colonies
Other titles: West-Indian adventurer.; Montgomery
Description: "The first--and apparently also the last--three-volume novel to be printed in Jamaica … The author remains unknown--he was probably a Scotchman. The work is apparently autobiographic, and contains numerous commentaries on military affairs, and may be taken as historically correct. It is of interest as being from the pen of one who wrote sympathetically both of the manners and morals of the inhabitants of Jamaica, with the example of St. Domingo before his eyes, and of the question of the gradual abolition of slavery; and, often in the form of post-prandial conversation, gives views on the condition of life in Jamaica generally and forms on the whole a true account of life on the sugar estates and pens at that period, and of the maroon war. The hero's father, a lieutenant, exchanges from an English into an Irish regiment ordered to Jamaica, so as to get to a warm climate for the sake of his young wife, who was threatened with a decline. The time was about 1769 … Here he stayed five years, when, after furlough at home, he went with a detachment to repel the rebellion in the American colonies, where he remained till the Peace of Versailles, when he returned on half pay and settled in Scotland. In course of time his son goes out to a plantation in Jamaica in 1793 consigned to a typical planting attorney in Kingston"--The press and printers of Jamaica prior to 1820 / by Frank Cundall, 1916, pages 57-58.
Notes: Sabin, J. Dictionary of books relating to America from its discovery to the present time, entry 50161

Institute of Jamaica. Bibliographia jamaicensis, entry 876

Ragatz, L.J. Guide for the study of British Caribbean history, 1763-1834, page 366

Block, A. English novel, 1740-1850 (1961 edition), page 164