The Dying Negro, A Poem.
London: W. Flexney, 1775.
Price: $2,500.00
About the item
Third edition, Corrected and Enlarged. Engraved title vignette by Isaac Taylor after Egginton. [ii], x, 24 pp. Uncut. 4to. Stitched. ESTC T35109; Work, page 309; Sabin 18937 (lists only an edition of 1793).
Item #314924
The Advertisement following the title states: "The following Poem was occasioned by a fact which had recently happened at the time of its first publication in 1773. A Negro, belonging to the Captain of a West Indiaman, having agreed to marry a white woman, his fellow-servant, in order to effect his purpose, had left his master's house, and procured himself to be baptized; but being detected and taken, he was sent on board the Captain's vessel then lying in the River; where, finding no chance of escaping, and preferring death to another voyage to America, he took an opportunity of shooting himself..."
"The first significant piece of verse propaganda directed explicitly against the English slave systems" (Wood, The Poetry of Slavery, page 36).
