❦Rare Books Intel

The Dying Negro

by DAY, Thomas & BICKNELL, John

$1,298 · Offered by Biblio

"Receive these sighs to thee my soul I breathe. Fond love in dying groans is all I can bequeathe." Scarce second edition, published anonymously like the first edition, one year prior, of The Dying Negro, "the first significant piece of verse propaganda directed explicitly against the English slave systems". Using a range of rhetorical devises from elegy to prosopopoeia, the dying speaker addresses his beloved, his master, the gods of Africa, and the Christian God, in registers ranging from the sentimental to the polemical to the vengeful, inaugurating a new kind of mortuary poetics. 4to, rebound in modern paper over boards. No writings, markings or bookplates of any kind. Verso of last page with some very light soiling, overall clean. An extremely good copy of this early and important abolitionist poem. Book #Cv2327. $1298. We specialize in Rare Ayn Rand, history, and science.

  • Publisher: Flexney
  • Year: 1774
  • Edition: Second
  • Binding: hardcover

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.