WRITING THE LITERARY HISTORY OF THE CHANNEL ISLANDS

This paper offers an introductory outline of the literary history of the Channel Islands. Little has been written on this topic before, even on the one or two major authors who are well known, and nothing resembling a general literary history exists, into which individual works might be contextualised. The main topics of the paper are the struggle between English and French as literary languages; poetry in patois in the nineteenth century; genre fiction in English in the twentieth century; the fine novels of Guernsey life of Victor Hugo and G. B. Edwards; and the spate of novels written in the last ten years about the wartime occupation of the islands.