Most writers associated with the first generation of British Romanticism - Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Southey, Thelwall, and others - wrote against the slave trade. This edition collects a corpus of work which reflects the issues and theories concerning slavery and the status of the slave.

Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- Bibliography -- Note on copy texts -- Edward Long, 'Negroes' from History of jamaica (1774) -- John Reinhold Forster, Observations Made During a Voyage Round the World, on Physical Geography, Natural History, and Ethic Philosophy (1778) -- Henry Home, Lord Karnes, 'Preliminary Discourse, Concerning the Origin of Men and of Languages' from Sketches of the History of Man (1779) -- Samuel Stanhope Smith, An Essay on the Causes of the Variety of Complexion in the Human Species (1789) -- Pieter Camper, The Works of the Late Professor Camper, on the connexion between the Science of Anatomy and the Arts of Drawing, Painting, Statuary &c &c (1794) -- Sir William Jones, 'On the Origin and Families of Nations', from Discourses delivered before the Asiatic Society ... By Sir William Jones (1821) -- Johann Fredrich Blumenbach, On the Natural Variety of Mankind in The Anthropological Treatise of Johann Fredrich Blumenbach (1865) -- Charles White, An Account of the Regular Gradation in Man, and in Different Animals and Vegetables; and from the Former to the Latter ( 1799) -- William Cobbett, 'Summary of Politics', Cobbett's Political Register (1802) -- James Cowles Prichard, Researches into the Physical History of Man (1813) -- Sir William Lawrence, Lectures on Physiology, Zoology, and the Natural History of Mankind delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons (1819) -- Georges Cuvier, Cuvier's Animal Kingdom, arranged according to its organization; forming the basis for a natural history of animals (1840) -- Notes -- Index.