Estate / Collection: Property from the Rotondaro Collection

CLARKSON, THOMAS

The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade by the British Parliament. London: Printed by R. Taylor and Co, for Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1808. First edition. Two volumes, original publisher's blue paper over boards, original paper spine (lettered in ink with the titles), housed in a morocco-backed clamshell case. 8 7/8 x 5 3/8 inches (22.5 x 14 cm); [iv], 572 pp., folding map, plate of manacles; [ii], 592 pp., folding plate of a slave ship opposite p. 111. An uncut copy, the blue boards a bit soiled and worn, the spines toned, worn at extremities, some cracking in joints but holding firm on the cords, apparently in original, unrestored condition, internally a generally clean copy with some scattered minor foxing, a restored tear to the folding plate of the slave ship. Front free endpapers with the neatly written name of William Gundry of Calne [Wiltshire] on endpaper and title, dated the year of publication, and the later stamped name of M. E. L. Joseph-Mitchell.

This is the best work on the history of the Abolitionist movement that led to the end of slavery in Britain and its colonies, and it is replete with extraordinary and disquieting anecdotes. The three plates include the engraving of the cross-section and plan of a slave ship, which, as Clarkson writes, made "an instantaneous impression of horror upon all who saw it." While at Oxford studying to become a clergyman, he wrote a prizewinning essay on slavery, and subsequently had a moment of conversion when "a thought came into my mind, that if the contents of the Essay were true, it was time some person should see these calamities to their end." Despite the fact that his efforts undermined his health and fortune, in time he became a figure of enormous moral influence in Abolitionist circles, and he ranks with Wilberforce as an architect of the act abolishing slavery in the British empire that was ultimately passed in 1833.

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