Message in a Bottle: The Literature of Small Islands

Edward L. Edmonds is a professor of education at the University of
Prince Edward Island and an honorary chief of the Mi’kmaq of Prince
Edward Island.

Message in a Bottle comprises 15 of the 30-plus papers that were
presented at an International Conference in Charlottetown, Prince Edward
Island, in June 1998. The most notable omission, as the editors
acknowledge, is the “wrap-up” prognosis and commentary by Rex
Murphy, unavoidable in the circumstances. But then, something is
inevitably lost in the editors’ attempt to transcribe and condense the
enthusiasm and multifarious exchanges of an international conference
into 284 pages of text. Nevertheless, the collection retains some of the
intellectual excitement.

A wide range of expertise—literary, historical, anthropological—is
exhibited by the 15 international academics who authored these papers.
The writing is rarely so technical as to be inaccessible to the general
reader, and a bibliography is provided with each essay. The book, which
is tastefully designed with generous amounts of white space, will be of
particular interest to those concerned with colonialism and with
postcolonial studies. Islanders will be intrigued by Sigurdsson’s
speculation that the Vinland visited by Leif Erikson was none other than
Prince Edward Island.