James Rodway

It was from here that Rodway responded to a newspaper advertisement calling for clerks overseas in British Guiana, inspired by his reading on exploration and studies of the tropics, including Charles Waterton's Wanderings in South America.

Alongside reading the few history books available on the colony, the works of Henry G. Dalton[27] and George Hanneman Bennett,[28] in order to better acquaint himself with his new home Rodway continued to cultivate the avid interest in botany that had begun back in England as a child.

In any time he was able to do so, Rodway took the opportunity to walk many miles to record local plant and animal life extensively;[29] as early as 1871, he began the first of his frequent boat trips along rivers and creeks to the Guyanese interior where he would come into contact with both the native and the Boviander populations.

Meanwhile, Rodway became known for his development of various orchids and ferns in the greenhouse of the Georgetown home he purchased in 1880, and won first prize at a flower exhibition held in the city's Botanical Gardens.

Thomson and Thurn encouraged him to put his acquired knowledge to wider use writing articles and studies for the respective institutions specific to the colony's wildlife as well its rural and Amazon-based communities.

[8] These developments encouraged Rodway to propose a book to the London-based publishing company T. Fisher Unwin – one that would be devised primarily from his previous botanical articles.

[36] With the positive reception to this book, Rodway established himself as an authority on the subject of British Guiana – in particular across the English-speaking world – even being referenced by the philosopher Herbert Spencer in his material.

In his career as colony historian, James Thomson of The Argosy was again instrumental in encouraging Rodway to hone his talent for research to deliver content for the publication.

Nicholas Darnell Davis,[38][39] a colonial official of British Guiana, one-time Postmaster-General and later author, also encouraged Rodway to use his skill in archiving the nation's history.

Rodway was enthusiastic and – after securing permissions from Governor Bruce to transcribe many of the documents from home – began the monumental task with the aid of a hired translator who would be able to decipher the old Hollandic dialect where necessary.

It would be access to these files – the first comprehensive English translation of testimonies and accounts recorded by members of the colony's former Dutch administration and plantocracy – that would lead Rodway to write what would be considered the most seminal literary history of British Guiana to date.