Thomas Clarkson’s Latin Essay: The Origins and Legacy of an Antislavery Text

Professor Emerita Dee E. Andrews and Assistant Professor Christopher S. Parmenter will discuss two elements of their new book manuscript, Thomas Clarkson’s Latin Essay: The Making of an Abolitionist Author in the Age of Revolution. Based on the first translation of Clarkson’s “An Liceat Invitos in Servitutem Dare” since 1786, their work explores in depth the composition, publication, distribution, response, and reprinting, not least of all in Revolutionary France, of a central text in the first abolition movement. Our speakers will introduce the subject of the Latin Essay itself, the significance its translation, and how Clarkson reverses the formerly conventional argument regarding slavery in the classical tradition. There will be examples of unusual reader response to “An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species” (1786) — the Latin Essay (greatly expanded) in print — and the essay’s endurance as an abolitionist symbol.

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