Introduction

The Woman of Colour (1808), an anonymous epistolary novel, remained out of print until the 2008 release of Lyndon J. Dominique's Broadview edition. It has since become central to studies in the long eighteenth century because of its subversion of the marriage plot and the intertwining of this plot with Black liberation struggles through the voice of the mixed-race Jamaican protagonist Olivia Fairfield. In this introduction to an ECF special issue dedicated to the novel, the authors trace developments in Black British history, Black womanist historiography, and global Romanticism in order to situate The Woman of Colour within a radical Black Atlantic tradition. They argue that the novel foregrounds the resistance of Black and enslaved people, and that the refractive force of the plot breaks away from the teleology of colonial conquest and opens up multiple interpretive possibilities.