Mar 26, 2015 - Sale 2377

Sale 2377 - Lot 8

Price Realized: $ 4,500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,500 - $ 5,000
[WILBERFORCE, WILLIAM, ET AL]. An Abstract of the Evidence Delivered before a Select Committee of the House of Commons. Demi-8vo, 128 pages. Large folding diagram of the hold of the slave-ship Brooke: 16-1/2 x 16 inches, lightly toned with some faint offset, an excellent example, seldom found thus. Edinburgh: Printed at the Expense of the Glasgow and Edinburgh Societies, 1791

Additional Details

first edinburgh edition of the "evidence" as presented before the house of commons. This presentation was meant to shock those members of that body who were still playing down the cruelties of the slave trade. The plate is accompanied by a page describing the horrendous below-deck conditions of the slave ship. Also in the evidence are accounts by eye-witnesses to the barbarous treatment of the African slaves. A publisher's page explaining this book and the reasons for it precedes the title page. Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846) was an ardent abolitionist who worked with members of Parliament like William Wilberforce to bring about the end of the African slave trade. Clarkson rooted out the evidence and Wilberforce and others would bring it up in the House of Commons. Their combined work and that of other British Abolitionists first brought about the 1807 ban on the taking of slaves from Africa, and later the total emancipation of the slaves in the West Indies (1834). a rare book, seldom found with the slave ship plate.