Affect and Abolition in the Anglo-Atlantic, 1770–1830

Stephen Ahern is Associate Professor of English at Acadia University, Nova Scotia, Canada.

Contents: Introduction: The bonds of sentiment, Stephen Ahern; Part 1 Sympathy’s Empire: Capitalism and slavery, once again with feeling, George Boulukos; Acts of sympathy: abolitionist poetry and transatlantic identification, Tobias Menely. Part 2 Nation, Narration, Emancipation: Commerce, sentiment, and free air: contradictions of abolitionist rhetoric, Anthony John Harding; Sympathy, nerve physiology, and national degeneration in Anna Letitia Barbauld’s Epistle to William Wilberforce, Mary A. Waters. Part 3 Spectacles of Suffering: To force a tear: British abolitionism and the 18th-century stage, Brycchan Carey; ’Pity for the poor Africans’: William Cowper and the limits of abolitionist affect, Joanne Tong; ’We beg Your Excellency’: the sentimental politics of abolitionist petitions in the late 18th century, Christine Levecq. Part 4 Sentimental Bondage: The contradictions of racialized sensibility: gender, slavery and the limits of sympathy, Jamie Rosenthal; The cruelty of slavery, the cruelty of freedom: colonization and the politics of humaneness in the early republic, Margaret Abruzzo; Selected bibliography; Index.