Thomas Thistlewood came to Jamaica from Lincolnshire, England in 1750, and lived as an estate overseer and small landowner in western Jamaica until his death in 1786. Throughout his life he kept a record of his daily activities and his observations of life around him. These diaries, about 10,000 pages, were deposited in the Lincolnshire Archives. They contain a rich chronicle of plantation life - its people, social life, agricultural techniques, medicinal remedies and relations between slaves and their owners.

The wealth of information left behind in the Thistlewood's diaries has been fashioned by Professor Hall into a remarkable account of planation life in Jamaica at the height of its era of sugar plantation prosperity. It gives historians and students of history a new perspective on the social history of mid eighteenth century Jamaica, the Tacky Rebellion, and the tenuous relations between planters and the Maroons. This reprint contains a revised index.