The Quintas of Madeira

History & Culture

With selection notes

The Beneficent Usurpers

Desmond Gregory

English · 1988 edition

An extensively researched account of nearly two centuries of British commercial and social influence on Madeira, tracing how resident merchant families informally “colonised” the island as a key staging post in transatlantic trade.

History & Culture

Journal of a Visit to Madeira and Portugal (1853–1854)

Isabella de França

English · 1970 edition

The illustrated travel journal of Isabella de França, wife of a London merchant of Madeiran origin — lost for nearly a century, then rediscovered — offering a vivid writer’s and watercolourist’s portrait of island life in 1853–54.

History & Culture

Madeira: Women, History, Books and Places

Susanna Hoe

English · 2004 edition

Part of the "Of Islands & Women" series — a literary and historical exploration of Madeira through the lives of its women and the accounts of women travellers and writers who visited or lived on the island.

History & Culture

Scenes from the History of the Portuguese in Guyana

Mary Noel Menezes

English · 1986 edition

An illustrated history of the Madeiran Portuguese in British Guiana, who began arriving in 1835 to work on sugar plantations and later became a prominent merchant community.