British Abolitionism and the Rhetoric of Sensibility: Writing, Sentiment and Slavery, 1760-1807 (Palgrave Studies in the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Cultures of Print)

British Abolitionism and the Rhetoric of Sensibility: Writing, Sentiment, and Slavery, 1760-1807 argues that participants in the late eighteenth-century slavery debate developed a distinct sentimental rhetoric, using the language of the heart to powerful effect in the most important political and humanitarian battle of the time. Carey examines both familiar and unfamiliar texts, including poetry by Thomas Day, Hannah More, and William Cowper, novels by Sarah Scott, Henry Mackenzie, and Thomas Day, life writing by Ignatius Sancho, Olaudah Equiano, and Ottobah Cugoano, and political writing by James Ramsey, Thomas Clarkson and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.