ABSTRACT
Anne Hart Gilbert and Elizabeth Hart Thwaites lived their lives in Antigua, at the southern end of the East Caribbean. Sisters born a year apart to a black slaveholder father, Anne Hart Gilbert (1768–1834) and Elizabeth Hart Thwaites (1771–1833) were the first educators of slaves and free blacks in Antigua and among the first African Caribbean female writers. 2 Elizabeth Hart, moreover, was one of the first women in the Caribbean to agitate and write against slavery. Related to distinguished Wesleyan Methodist families, the Hart Sisters were prominent members of the religious and cultural intelligentsia in Antigua during the late slave period there, when the institution was under attack and the character of society was changing. 3
