The Abolition of Slavery and the Slave Trade"

Towards the end of the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth century, the debate over whether or not to abolish the slave trade and emancipate the slaves became of premiere interest in Britain. An array of popular literature concerning slavery, written during the Romantic period, helped spur public interest in this debate. In this essay, I will first examine two popular Romantic period memoirs of former slaves, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, and The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave, in order to show the viewpoint of slavery from the slave's pers…