British Abolitionism and the Rhetoric of Sensibility

Beyond and against capitalism: abolitionism and the moral dimension of humanitarian practice

“…The important innovation of the abolitionist ideological platform was not simply a new humanitarian focus on the suffering of the enslaved. The image of the suffering slave ‒ in the abstract ‒ was at that time a well‐known trope of sentimental literature (Carey ). But the slave's condition was considered lamentable and sympathy‐provoking yet natural and inevitable ‒ especially when enslaved labour in the colonies contributed to English economic power.…”

Politics of Sympathy and Outrage in Wordsworth’s Abolitionist Poetry

“…This attitude has generated a surprising query how the barbarous and wild rebel suddenly turned into a noble figure in British imagination. Carey (2005) reads Wordsworth's To Thomas Clarkson and To Toussaint L'ouverture, written in the year 1807, as "more than merely lukewarm" (p. 85), for the abolition of slave trade cause. Wood (2002) does not find the proportion between compassionate logic and pity or pain felt for the slaves.…”

Mediating Abolition: The Collaborative Consciousness of Liverpool's William Roscoe and James Currie

“…To compose 'The African' the two men literally co-wrote the poem by integrating their own individual lines into one coherent lyric that complemented Roscoe's longer poem and added to a growing body of abolitionist poetry notable for its deployment of what Brycchan Carey calls the 'rhetoric of sensibility'. 6 Roscoe and Currie's literary collaboration, apparently inconsequential when compared with other collaborative partnerships of the time or when measured against the field of reform literature in general, nevertheless offers important insights into the interdependence of collaboration and reform and the powerful intimacy that can develop between collaborative partners. This essay considers three aspects of their relationship: its logistical (networking) strategies; its rhetorical and collaborative strategies, including how individual writings mutually reinforced each other; and, finally, how collaboration fostered a deeply intimate bond between the two men, as evinced in Roscoe's 'To Dr. Currie', a poem occasioned by the deaths of two of Currie's children.…”