On this page I have selected a few titles for further reading on slavery, abolition, and emancipation. Historians and literary scholars have produced huge quantities of material on this subject, and I do not intend to survey the entire literature on the subject. Instead, this bibliography suggests a few particularly good or important titles, arranged in small groups, which should be enough to get you started in your research. Any serious scholar of slavery and abolition will notice many omissions. Likewise, students will not always find all of these titles in their library. However, most of these works are generally available, and should provide a good introduction to the subject.

Many of the books mentioned below are in print and on sale. Where available, I have provided a link to the Amazon.co.uk page advertising that book. This will open in a new window.

General Studies of Slavery

Blackburn, Robin, The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492-1800 (London: Verso, 1997) | View this title on Amazon
Davis, David Brion, Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2006) | View this title on Amazon
Davis, David Brion, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1966) | View this title on Amazon
Eltis, David, The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999) | View this title on Amazon
Kolchin, Peter, American Slavery: 1619-1877 (London and New York: Penguin, 1995) | View this title on Amazon
Walvin, James, Black Ivory: A History of British Slavery (London: HarperCollins, 1992) | View this title on Amazon
Walvin, James, A Short History of Slavery (London: Penguin, 2007) | View this title on Amazon

General Studies of the Slave Trade

Curtin, Phillip D, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969)
Klein, Herbert S., The Atlantic Slave Trade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010) | View this title on Amazon
Rediker, Marcus, The Slave Ship: A Human History (London: John Murray, 2008) | View this title on Amazon
Thomas, Hugh, The Slave Trade: The History of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1440-1870 (London: Picador, 1997) | View this title on Amazon

General Studies of Abolition

Blackburn, Robin, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery 1776-1848 (London: Verso, 1988) | View this title on Amazon
Brown, Christopher Leslie, Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006) | View this title on Amazon
Carey, Brycchan, From Peace to Freedom: Quaker Rhetoric and the Birth of American Antislavery, 1657-1761 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012) | View this title on Amazon
Drescher, Seymour, Abolition: A History of Slavery and Antislavery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) | View this title on Amazon
Hochschild, Adam, Bury the Chains: The First International Human Rights Movement (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2005) | View this title on Amazon
Temperley, Howard, British Antislavery: 1833-1870 (London: Macmillan, 1972)
Turley, David, The Culture of English Antislavery, 1780-1860 (London: Routledge, 1991) | View this title on Amazon

The Economics of Slavery

Bender, Thomas, ed., The Antislavery Debate: Capitalism and Abolitionism as a Problem in Historical Interpretation (Oxford: University of California Press, 1992) | View this title on Amazon
Drescher, Seymour, Econocide: British Slavery in the Era of Abolition (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1977) | View this title on Amazon
Williams, Eric, Capitalism and Slavery (London: André Deutsch, 1964) | View this title on Amazon

Women and Antislavery

Ferguson, Moira, Subject to Others: British Women Writers and Colonial Slavery, 1670-1834 (London: Routledge, 1992)
Midgley, Clare, Women against Slavery: the British Campaigns, 1780-1870 (London: Routledge, 1992) | View this title on Amazon

Slave Resistance

James, C.L.R., The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution (1938) 3rd edn (London: Allison and Busby, 1980) | View this title on Amazon

Slavery in Literature and Culture

Ahern, Stephen, ed., Affect and Abolition in the Anglo-Atlantic: 1770–1830 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013) | View this title on Amazon
Boulukos, George, The Grateful Slave: The Emergence of Race in Eighteenth-Century British and American Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008) | View this title on Amazon
Carey, Brycchan, British Abolitionism and the Rhetoric of Sensibility: Writing, Sentiment,and Slavery, 1760-1807 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) | View this title on Amazon
Carey, Brycchan, Markman Ellis, and Sara Salih, eds, Discourses of Slavery and Abolition: Britain and its Colonies, 1760-1838 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) | View this title on Amazon
Carey, Brycchan, and Peter Kitson, eds, Slavery and the Cultures of Abolition: Essays Marking the Bicentennial of the British Abolition Act of 1807 (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2007) | View this title on Amazon
Dabydeen, David, ed., The Black Presence in English Literature (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985)
Ellis, Markman, The Politics of Sensibility: Race, Gender and Commerce in the Sentimental Novel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) | View this title on Amazon
Ferguson, Moira, Subject to Others: British Women Writers and Colonial Slavery, 1670-1834 (London: Routledge, 1992)
Festa, Lynn, Sentimental Figures of Empire in Eighteenth-Century Britain and France (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006) | View this title on Amazon
Gikandi, Simon, Slavery and the Culture of Taste (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011) | View this title on Amazon
Innes, C.L., A History of Black and Asian Writing in Britain, 1700-2000, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008) | View this title on Amazon
Sypher, Wylie, Guinea's Captive Kings: British Anti-Slavery Literature of the Eighteenth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1942)

Black Self-Representations

Carretta, Vincent, and Philip Gould, eds, Genius in Bondage: Literature of the Early Black Atlantic (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001) | View this title on Amazon
Costanzo, Angelo, Surprizing Narrative: Olaudah Equiano and the Beginnings of Black Autobiography (New York: Greenwood Press, 1987) | View this title on Amazon
Davis, Charles T., and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., The Slave's Narrative (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985) | View this title on Amazon
Edwards, Paul and David Dabydeen, eds, Black Writers in Britain 1760-1890 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991) | View this title on Amazon
Sandiford, Keith A., Measuring the Moment: Strategies of Protest in Eighteenth-Century Afro-English Writing (London: Associated University Presses, 1988)

The Black Atlantic

Gilroy, Paul, The Black Atlantic: modernity and double consciousness (London: Verso, 1993) | View this title on Amazon
Linebaugh, Peter, and Marcus Rediker, The many-headed hydra. sailors, slaves, commoners, and the hidden history of the revolutionary Atlantic (London: Verso, 2000) | View this title on Amazon
Schama, Simon, Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution (London: BBC Books, 2005) | View this title on Amazon

Biographies of Abolitionists

Aitken, Jonathan, John Newton: From Disgrace to Amazing Grace (London: Continuum, 2007) | View this title on Amazon
Carretta, Vincent, Equiano, the African: Biography of a Self-made Man (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2005) | View this title on Amazon
Grant, Hester, The Good Sharps: The Brothers and Sisters Who Remade Their World (London: Chatto & Windus, 2020) | View this title on Amazon
Hague, William, William Wilberforce: The Life of the Great Anti-slave Trade Campaigner (London: HarperPress, 2007) | View this title on Amazon
Jackson, Maurice, Let This Voice Be Heard: Anthony Benezet, Father of Atlantic Abolitionism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010) | View this title on Amazon
Plank, Geoffrey, John Woolman's Path to the Peaceable Kingdom: A Quaker in the British Empire (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012) | View this title on Amazon
Shyllon, Folarin, James Ramsay: The Unknown Abolitionist (Edinburgh: Canongate, 1977)
Wilson, Ellen Gibson, Thomas Clarkson: A Biography, 2nd edn (York: William Sessions, 1996)

Africans in Britain

Chater, Kathleen, Untold Histories: Black people in England and Wales during the period of the British Slave trade, c. 1660-1807 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009) | View this title on Amazon
Fryer, Peter, Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain (1984), new edition with an introduction by Paul Gilroy (London: Pluto Press, 2010) | View this title on Amazon
Gerzina, Gretchen, Black England: Life Before Emancipation, (London: Allison & Busby, 1999)
Shyllon, Folarin, Black People in Britain 1555-1833 (London: Oxford University Press, for the Institute of Race Relations, 1977)

Anthologies of Writing About Slavery

Basker, James G., Amazing Grace: An Anthology of Poems About Slavery, 1660-1810 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002) | View this title on Amazon
Caretta, Vincent, ed., Unchained Voices: An Anthology of Black Authors in the English-Speaking World of the Eighteenth Century (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996) | View this title on Amazon
Heuman, Gad, and James Walvin, eds, The Slavery Reader (London: Routledge, 2003) | View this title on Amazon
Kitson, Peter, et al, eds, Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation: Writings in the British Romantic Period, 8 vols (London: Chatto and Windus, 1999). A collection of facsimile material.
Pinfold, John, ed., The Slave Trade Debate: Contemporary Writings for and Against (Oxford: The Bodleian Library, 2007) | View this title on Amazon

Further Reading:

A Bibliography of Slavery, Abolition, and Emancipation

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* This page last updated 28 November 2015 *