Mar 28, 2019 - Sale 2503

Sale 2503 - Lot 61

Price Realized: $ 625
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 400 - $ 600
(SLAVERY AND ABOLITION.) [Day, Thomas; and John Bicknell.] The Dying Negro, a Poem. Illustrated title page. [2], x, 24 pages. 4to, stitched; uncut. London: W. Flexney, et al., 1775

Additional Details

Third edition of a poem said to be based on an actual incident, in which an enslaved man and a white servant girl had decided to marry. When the man left his master's house to be baptized, he was captured and taken aboard his master's ship. Rather than be separated from his bride-to-be, he shot himself. "The first significant piece of verse propaganda directed explicitly against the English slave systems"--Wood, The Poetry of Slavery, page 36.