African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
342 p, First published in 1764, The Sugar Cane is a major work in the history of Anglophone Caribbean literature. It is the only poem written in the Caribbean before the twentieth century to achieve a place in the Western 'canon'. Grainger wrote a "West India Georgic", challenging assumptions about poetic diction and the proper subject matter of poetry, and boldly asserting the importance of the Caribbean to the eighteenth-century British empire. This is the first reliable text and critical study of the poem, setting it within the context of Grainger's life and work; Grainger interprets his own experience of the Caribbean through his wide reading of literature. This is a critical study of his poem "The Sugar-Cane." (Amazon)
