This thesis examines the published writing about the British Caribbean, by white women, in the years 1770-1845. The study includes travel accounts, published histories, natural histories, diaries, letters and novels, which represent a range of views on slavery from anti-slavery to pro-slavery. White women's writing from the Caribbean remains a neglected topic, despite pioneering work about North America, and some of the texts I examine have not previously been used in a study of slavery in the British West Indies. As well as using these `new' sources, the thesis also makes a theoretical contribution to the study of slavery in the Caribbean. Texts are deconstructed in order to analyse the powerful images of `race' and racism present in women's writing. It is argued that white women travellers and novelists played an important role in imperialism in contributing to contemporary discourses on racism and white superiority. I suggest that even `anti'-slavery texts contained powerful negative images of slaves and of the free black and mixed-origins populations. The thesis also suggests that white women accepted white male patriarchy in slave society, and even contributed to their own gender oppression by their glorification of stereotypical female gender characteristics.