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Book jackets render images of moment and culture. They
are graphic representations of the contents of the book made
marketable through aesthetic appeals to taste and convention
and prevailing political and social mores. As such, they
speak eloquently of the moment and the culture.
This is particularly true of the graphics for that first
wave of Caribbean literary and intellectual work published
in England from the late 1940's on. Marketing the work of a
people from the most neglected corner of the Empire at the
moment of its dissolution produced images that yield great
insight into the complexities of a colonial relationship
undergoing rapid change. The book jacket art for the great
wave of Caribbean writing for more than a thirty year period
beginning in the fifties spoke often to familiar exoticist
attitudes toward the region, rendering it as primitive and
violent or edenic and simplistic.
The project is an effort to
preserve some 600 fragile book jackets of the H.D. Carberry
Collection of Caribbean Studies in Special Collection of the
library of the University of Illinois at Chicago and to
provide access for scholars and general readers through the
digitization of its images. Collected over the period from
the 1940's through the nineties by Jamaican nationalist poet
and Supreme Court Justice H.D.Carberry, the Carberry
Collection is comprised of 1000 volumes, two thirds of which
are literature and about one third history and politics.
Almost all of these volumes are first editions and some of
the literary works are inscribed. Despite wide distribution
at the time of publication and often multiple reprint
editions of especially the literary works, a large number of
these volumes are now out of print and unavailable.
Preserving the jackets in protective sleeves and creating
digitized images of them makes this rare
Collection as resource to be shared by libraries, scholars
and general readers everywhere. The book jacket project will
be of great benefit to specialists in Caribbean studies and
postcolonial studies in general, to historians of culture
and art and to general readers with an interest in the
Caribbean. The scholars and librarians in this and other
projects involved with the Carberry Collection are dedicated
to the idea that this is a great resource to be shared by
institutions everywhere through the fullest use of the
available technology.
This project was made possible through the generous gift
of the Janice and Gary Buslik Fund for Caribbean Studies and
of the skill and time of Richard A. Stack.
Copyright, Board of Trustees of the University of
Illinois
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