------- Details: St Helena Britannica: Studies in South Atlantic Island History, by Trevor W. Hearl; edited by A.H. Schulenburg. London: Society of Friends of St Helena, 2013. xxxiv + 341 pp. 

This long awaited collection of papers on St Helena by the late Trevor W. Hearl (1924-2007) comprises an introduction and thirty chapters, as well as an editor’s preface and a select bibliography of Hearl’s writings on this South Atlantic island. These papers had previously been published only as typescript leaflets and in small specialist journals. The chapters cover aspects of St Helena’s history from its discovery to the 1950s, including sixteenth and seventeenth century visitors and surgeons, East India shipping, the island’s Huguenots and Baptists, telegraphs, the Napoleonic period, island merchants, horse racing, Darwin and other natural historians, church memorials, photography and publishing, as well as St Helena’s role as a whaling port and coaling station. 

The book is of relevance to anyone with an interest in St Helena and the East India Company, as well as to readers with a general interest in the history of the British Empire. "Editors of collected works do not always receive the credit that is their due, so I think it is worth putting on record the rigorous, yet sensitive way in which Alexander Schulenburg has edited this volume. That this book reads so seamlessly is very largely due to him. 

Dr. Schulenburg has also provided an important introduction to the book which not only puts Trevor’s writings and his contribution to the historiography of St. Helena into context, but faces up to some of the problems and limitations associated with his work." (John Pinfold, The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford)