RILAND, John.

£1,850 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Memoirs of a West-India Planter, re-published from an original manuscript: First edition, second issue, inscribed on the title page "From the author to R. M. B. Lany[?] Oct 6. 1837".The book purports to be an edited manuscript written by an unknown plantation heir, born in 1778, who became horrified with slavery after returning from his studies at Oxford aboard a slave ship via Africa. His book laid bare the violence of slavery in the colonies and appealed to Christian audiences to join the growing movement for its abolition. Though it has been frequently cited as an account of slavery by modern historians, it is apparently fictional, and much of the detail was taken from other authors (see Burstein). John Riland, purportedly the editor, was curate of Yoxall in Staffordshire.The work was first published in 1827 and re-issued here four years after the abolition of slavery within the British Empire. This issue adds new preliminaries, an advertisement noting the accession of Queen Victoria and that recent elections had "produced another crisis in the history of the Abolition of Negro Slavery", and an address to the colonial secretary, Lord Glenelg, appealing for an amelioration of the "apprenticeship" system for formerly enslaved people, which prolonged slavery under another name.

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