English: Faculty Publications

Martha Gurney and the Anti-Slave Trade Movement, 1788-94

Document Type

Contribution to Book

Publication Date

4-21-2011

Publication Title

Women, Dissent, and Anti-Slavery in Britain and America, 1790-1865

DOI

10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199585489.003.0003

ISBN

9780199585489

Abstract

This chapter explores the work of Martha Gurney (1733-1816), a staunch Baptist and the leading woman bookseller and publisher in London in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, during the first decade of the abolitionist movement in England. The chapter examines the fourteen abolitionist pamphlets Gurney published or sold between 1787 and 1794 and their place within the abolitionist movement, with special attention to An Address to the People of Great Britain, on the Propriety of Abstaining from West-India Produce (1791) by William Fox. The Address, the most widely distributed pamphlet of the eighteenth century, created widespread support for a nationwide boycott of sugar from the West Indies. Though Gurney and her pamphleteers were unable to persuade parliament to end the slave trade at that time, they laid the groundwork for the later work of Elizabeth Heyrick and the boycott movement of the 1820s.

Comments

Georgia Southern University faculty member, Timothy Whelan authored, "Martha Gurney and the Anti-Slave Trade Movement, 1788-94."

Copyright

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