White Witch of Rosehall

Name: White Witch of Rosehall
Author: H. G. de Lisser

The legend of Annie Palmer, the plantation mistress and White Witch, is vividly recounted in this supernatural tale of nineteenth-century Jamaica.

Having come to Jamaica to learn the planting business, Robert Rutherford becomes a bookkeeper at the Rosehall sugar plantation near Montego Bay. The property is owned by the beautiful yet fearsome young widow Annie Palmer, whose three husbands have all died under curious circumstances. And very soon, Robert finds himself falling under the spell of his mistress.

Robert’s housekeeper Millicent urges him, with some success, to fall in with West Indian habits. But Mrs. Palmer won’t have another woman competing for Robert’s attention and will resort to voodoo witchcraft to get what she wants.

Originally published in 1929, this haunting tale of passion and betrayal draws readers into a dramatic, supernatural vision of colonial Jamaica in the early nineteenth century.

H. G. de Lisser

H. G. de Lisser (1878–1944) was a Jamaican journalist and novelist. Born in Falmouth, Jamaica, de Lisser was raised in a family of Afro-Jewish descent. At seventeen, he began working as a proofreader at the Gleaner, where his father was editor. By 1903, he earned the position of assistant editor and began writing several daily articles while working on the essays that would comprise his first collection, In Jamaica and Cuba (1910). His debut novel Jane’s Career: A Story of Jamaica (1913) has been recognized as the first West Indian novel to have a black character as its protagonist. He went on to publish several more essay collections, novels, and plays over the course of his career.