The Dying Negro

The Dying Negro: A Poetical Epistle was a 1773 abolitionist poem published in England, by John Bicknell and Thomas Day. It has been called "the first significant piece of verse propaganda directed explicitly against the English slave systems".[1] It was quoted in The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano of 1789.[2]

Details of publication
The Dying Negro, title page from third edition of 1775

The first draft of this pioneering work of abolitionist literature was written by Bicknell. Published versions were edited by Day, from 1773.[1] The first edition was anonymous; in all there were six editions.[3]

The work was dedicated to Jean-Jacques Rousseau.[4] A substantial introduction by Day to the second edition (1774), and reproduced in later editions, attacked West Indian slaveowners, and drew a parallel with ancient Sparta.[5][6] In the fifth edition of 1793, the names of both authors appeared.[7]

Background

The poem arose from a report in the Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser of 28 May 1773. It concerned a black servant of a Captain Ordington, who had intended to marry a white woman, being taken on board the Captain's vessel on the River Thames, and shooting himself.[8] The 1772 English legal decision in Somerset v Stewart had been widely interpreted as a ruling abolishing slavery in England, and the implication of what had occurred to the servant was a reaction to an illegal deportation. Day expanded Bicknell's draft, added footnote material on Africa, and played up the "nobleness" of the African depicted in the story.[9]

Influence

The poem ends on a note suggesting future African vengeance. It was influential on later abolitionist writers.[10] It has been suggested that The Negro Revenged, an illustration by Henry Fuseli to the poems of William Cowper, may also have been influenced by The Dying Negro.[11]

Notes
  1. Marcus Wood (2003). The Poetry of Slavery: An Anglo-American Anthology, 1764–1865. Oxford University Press. p. 36. ISBN 978-0-19-818709-7.
  2. William L. Andrews; Henry Louis Gates (15 January 2000). Slave Narratives: Library of America #114. Library of America. p. 115. ISBN 978-1-59853-212-8.
  3. Lee Erickson, "Unboastful Bard": Originally Anonymous English Romantic Poetry Book Publication, 1770–1835, New Literary History Vol. 33, No. 2, Anonymity (Spring, 2002), pp. 247–278, at p. 272. Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20057723
  4. Andrew McCann, Conjugal Love and the Enlightenment Subject: The Colonial Context of Non-Identity in Maria Edgeworth's "Belinda", Novel: A Forum on Fiction Vol. 30, No. 1 (Autumn, 1996), pp. 56–77, at p. 70. Published by: Duke University Press DOI: 10.2307/1345847 Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1345847
  5. Samuel Johnson in Context. Cambridge University Press. January 2012. p. 356. ISBN 978-0-521-19010-7.
  6. Edith Hall; Richard Alston; Justine McConnell (7 July 2011). Ancient Slavery and Abolition: From Hobbes to Hollywood. OUP Oxford. p. 131. ISBN 978-0-19-957467-4.
  7. Jack P. Greene (29 March 2013). Evaluating Empire and Confronting Colonialism in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Cambridge University Press. p. 187 note 79. ISBN 978-1-107-03055-8.
  8. Vincent Carretta (2011). Phillis Wheatley: Biography of a Genius in Bondage. University of Georgia Press. p. 129. ISBN 978-0-8203-3338-0.
  9. Nini Rodgers, Two Quakers and a Utilitarian: The Reaction of Three Irish Women Writers to the Problem of Slavery 1789–1807, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Section C Vol. 100C, No. 4 (2000), pp. 137–157, at pp. 138–9 with note. Published by: Royal Irish Academy. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25516261
  10. James G. Basker (2002). Amazing Grace: An Anthology of Poems about Slavery, 1660–1810. Yale University Press. p. 203. ISBN 978-0-300-09172-4.
  11. Jean Vercoutter; Hugh Honour (1989). The Image of the Black in Western Art. Office du livre. p. 93.
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