"Telling West Indian Lives: Life Narrative and the Reform of Plantation Slavery Cultures 1804-1834"draws renewed historical and literary attention to lived cultures of life story and narration in the late plantation slavery period. Drawing on fresh archival research, it highlights the formative influence of oral genres on written and dictated texts, varied genres of life narrative, and the ways in which extant written narratives circulated as part of and shaped evangelical, philanthropic and antislavery reform projects.