Maiden Voyages and Infant Colonies

This fully-annotated edition of Anna Maria Falconbridge’s “Two Voyages to Sierra Leone” (1794) and Mary Ann Parker’s “A Voyage Round the World” (1795) brings together the first published accounts by women of these new sites of British colonization. Laying the texts alongside one another brings into conjunction Britain’s concurrent, late-18th-century systems of transportation and resettlement, convictism and slavery. Written as a series of letters to a close female friend, “Two Voyages to Sierra Leone” is primarily concerned to expose the bungling, hypocrisy and greed of an African imperial venture run by some of Britain’s leading abolitionists. “A Voyage Round the World” covers social visiting and picnicking, the flora and fauna and observations on many of the colony of Botany Bay’s leading players. There are forthright comments on the horrors of transportation and a “manners and customs” portrait of local aborigines.