Black England - by Gretchen Gerzina (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

'This book brings history alive' BERNADINE EVARISTO

WITH A FOREWORD FROM ZADIE SMITH

'Black England is a book that will be relevant for ever' BENJAMIN ZEPHANIAH

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The idea that Britain became a mixed-race country after 1945 is a common mistake. Georgian England had a large and distinctive Black community. Whether prosperous citizens or newly freed slaves, they all ran the risk of kidnap and sale to plantations. Black England tells their dramatic, often moving stories.

In the eighteenth century, Black people could be found in clubs and pubs, there were special churches, Black-only balls and organisations for helping Black people who were out of work or in trouble. Many were famous and respected: most notably Francis Barber, Doctor Johnson's beloved manservant; Ignatius Sancho, a correspondent of Laurence Sterne; Francis Williams, a Cambridge scholar, and Olaudah Equiano whose Interesting Narrative went into multiple editions. But far more were ill-paid and ill-treated servants or beggars, despite having served Britain in war and on the seas. For alongside the free world there was slavery, from which many of these Black Britons had escaped.

The triumphs and tortures of Black England, the Ambivalent relations between the races, sometimes tragic, sometimes heart-warming, are brought to life in this wonderfully readable history. Black England explores a fascinating chapter of our shared past, a chapter that has been ignored too long.

About the Author

GRETCHEN GERZINA is the Paul Murray Kendall Chair in Biography, and Professor of English, at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. A tenured professor at Vassar College: and Barnard College, Columbia University; she was also the Kathe Tappe Vernon Professor of Biography at Dartmouth College where she was the first black woman to chair an Ivy League English Department. In addition, she was the Eastman Professor at Oxford University (Balliol College), Professor at Brunel University, and has directed three academic programs in African American Studies. She has written several acclaimed books including Carrington, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Mr and Mrs Prince. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Antiquarian Society, and appears often on radio and podcasts in Britain and America. She divides her time between Northampton, Massachusetts and Brooklyn, New York.