Invoking Slavery in the Eighteenth-Century British Imagination

In the eighteenth century, literary representations of slavery encompassed a range of physical and metaphysical conditions beyond the transatlantic slave trade. Without eliding the real and important differences between slave systems operating in the Atlantic world, this collection is a starting point for understanding the manner in which slavery became a powerful rhetorical device for helping British audiences gain a new perspective on their own position with respect to their government and the global sphere.