THE 19th CENTURY:
CEMENTING THE FICTION

By the 19th century, race had become a fairly established concept, backed by pseudoscience which attempted to associate skin colour with inherent, biological and intellectual differences. Importantly, chattel slavery had become indispensable to modern economy of European nations like Britain, France, Spain and the newly established United States which quite literally depended upon enslaved labour for its construction and sustenance. Thus the cementing of race as a construct was necessary for the wealth of colonial nations.

Non-fiction

"Atrocious Cruelty". New York Spectator 3 May 1834.

Bridges, George Wilson. A Voice from Jamaica. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green, 1823.

Canonge. "Hear Ye Deaf, and Look Ye Blind, That Ye May See-Isaiah." Liberator, 3 May 1834, p. 71.

Carmichael, Mrs A. C. Domestic Manners and Social Sonditions of the White, Coloured and Negro Population of the West Indies. London: Whittaker and Co., 1833.

Also available via Internet Archive.

Clapp, Theodore. Slavery: a Sermon. Delivered in the First Congregational Church in New Orleans, April 15, 1838. New Orleans: John Gibson, 1838.

Also available via Internet Archive and HathiTrust.

Cooper, Thomas. Facts Illustrative of the Condition of the Negro Slaves in Jamaica. London: J. Hatchard and Son, 1824.

Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Boston: Published At The Anti-Slavery Office, 1845.

Also available via Internet Archive and Google Books.

The Dred Scott Decision: Opinion of Chief Justice Taney. New York: Van Evrie, Horton & Co., 1860, c1859.

Also available via Digital History and UCL.

Elaw, Mrs Zilpha. Memoirs of the Life, Religious Experience, Ministerial Travel and Labours of Mrs. Zilpha Elaw, an American Female of Colour. London: T. Dudley, 1846.

Also available via Internet Archive.

Elizabeth, Old. Memoir Of Old Elizabeth, A Coloured Woman. Philadelphia: Collins, Printer, 1863.

Also available via Google Books.

Gobineau, comte de Arthur. The Inequality Of Human Races. London: William Heinemann, 1915.

Grégoire, Henri. An Enquiry Concerning the Intellectual and Moral Faculties, and Literature of Negroes. Trans. D. B. Warden. Brooklyn: Printed for Thomas Kirk, 1810.

Also available via the Internet Archive, and the University of South Carolina.

Hammon, Jupiter. An Address To The Negroes In The State Of New-York. New York; Published by Samuel Wood, 1806.

“Horrible Barbarity.” Vermont Chronicle, 9 May 1834, p. 75.

“Horrid Barbarity.” Ohio Observer, 15 May 1834.

How, Samuel Blanchard. Slaveholding not Sinful: Slavery the Punishment of Man's Sin. New York: R. & R. Brinkerhoff, 1856.

Also available via Internet Archives and HathiTrust.

Hunt, James. On the Negro's Place in Nature. New York, Van Evrie, Horton & Co., 1866.

Also available via the Wellcome Collection, Internet Archive and Google Books.

Jacobs, Harriet A. Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl. Written By Herself. Boston: 1861.

Also available via Google Books.

Northup, Solomon. Twelve Years A Slave. Narrative Of Solomon Northup. Auburn/Buffalo/London: Sampson Low, Son & Company, 1853.

Also available via Google Books.

Knox, Robert. The Races of Men: A Philosophical Enquiry Into the Influence of Race Over the Destinies of Nations. London: Henry Renshaw, 1862, c1850.

Also available via Internet Archive and Wellcome Collection.

Lawrence, Sir William. Lectures on Physiology, Zoology, and the Natural History of Man. London: Benbow, 1822.

Also available via Wellcome Collection and Internet Archive.

Lewis, Matthew Gregory. Journal of a West Indies Proprietor: Kept During a Residence in the Island of Jamaica. London: John Murray, 1834.

Also available via Project Gutenberg.

Mott, Abigail. Biographical Sketches and Anecdotes of Persons of Colour. York: Printed by W. Alexander & Son, 1826.

Also available via Documenting the American South and HathiTrust.

Napier, Charles Ottley Groom. The Book of Nature and the Book of Man. London: John Camden Hotten, 1870.

Also available via the Wellcome Collection.

Nell, William Cooper. Colored Patriots of the American Revolution. Boston: R.F. Wallcut, 1855.

Also available via Documenting the American South and Google Books.

Nott, Josiah Clark and Gliddon, George Robins. Types of mankind: or, Ethnological researches based upon the ancient monuments, paintings, sculptures, and crania of races, and upon their natural, geographical, philological and Biblical history. Philadelphia : J.B. Lippincott, Grambo & Co., 1854.

Also available via Internet Archive.

Offley, Greensbury Washington. A Narrative of the Life and Labors of the Rev. G. W. Offley, a Colored Man, Local Preacher and Missionary. Hartford, Connecticut. 1859.

Also available via HathiTrust.

Olmsted, Frederick Law. A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States; With Remarks on Their Economy. New York: Dix & Edwards; London: Sampson Low, Son & Co., 1856.

Also available via Documenting the American South and Internet Archive.

Philips, Wendell. Constitution of a Pro-Slavery Compact: Or Extracts from the Madison Papers. New York, American anti-slavery society, 1856.

Also available via Internet Archive and Google Books.

Pim, Bedford. The Negro and Jamaica. Read before the Anthropological Society of London, February 1, 1866, at St. James’s Hall, London. London: Trübner & Co., 1866.

Also available via HathiTrust.

Prince, Mary. The History Of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave. Related By Herself. London: Published By F. Westley And A. H. Davis, 1831.

Also available via the Early Caribbean Digital Archive and Google Books.

"Shocking Brutality." National Intelligencer, 29 Apr. 1834.

“State Of Slavery In The Colonies.” Parliamentary debate; Friday 19 May 1826. Via Hansard.

Stephen, James. England Enslaved by Her Own Slave Colonies. London: Printed by Richard Taylor, 1826.

Also available via Google Books.

Taylor, William Cooke. The Natural History of Society in the Barbarous and Civilized State: An Essay Towards Discovering the Origin and Course of Human Improvement. London : Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, & Longmans, 1840.

Also available via Google Books and the Wellcome Collection.

Van Evrie, John H. Negroes and Negro "slavery:" the first an inferior race; the latter its normal condition. New York, Van Evrie, Horton, 1863.

Also available via Internet Archive, Project Gutenberg and HathiTrust.

Williams, James. A Narrative of Events, since the First of August, 1834, by James Williams, an Apprenticed Labourer in Jamaica. Ed. Diana Paton. Durham/London: Duke University Press, 2001.

“Identity is not a set of fixed attributed, the unchanging essence of the inner self, but a constantly shifting process of positioning. We tend to think of identity as taking us back to our roots, the part of us which remains essentially the same across time. In fact, identity is always a never-completed process of becoming - a process of shifting identifications, rather than a singular, complete, finished state of being.”

Stuart Hall

Fiction

Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. London: W. Nicholson & Sons, 1847.

Brown, William Wells. Clotel; Or, The President's Daughter. 1853. Via Project Gutenberg.

Burke, John. The burden of the South, in verse; or, Poems on slavery, grave, humorous, didactic, and satirical. New York: Published by Everardus Warner, 1864.

Also available via Library of Congress and Internet Archive.

Cable, George Washington. The Grandissimes: A Story of Creole Life. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1880.

Also available via Google Books.

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. 1899.

Dacre, Charlotte. Zofloya; or the Moor. London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme, 1806.

Defoe, Daniel. The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. London: Seeley, Service & Co.1719.

Earle, William. Obi; or the History of Three-Fingered Jack. In a series of letters from a resident in Jamaica to a friend in England. 2nd Edition. Worcester, MA: Printed by Isaiah Thomas, 1804. c.1800.

Edgeworth, Maria. Belinda. 1801.

Haggard, H. Rider. King Solomon's Mines. 1885.

The History and Adventures of Jack Mansong, the Famous Negro Robber, and Terror of Jamaica. Otley: Printed by William Walker, 1850.

Also available via the National Library of Scotland and Wikisource.

Henty, G. A. A Roving Commission: Or, Through The Black Insurrection At Hayti. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1904, C.1899.

Also available via Internet Archive.

“Letter From the Hottentot Venus to Her Cousin”. Le Belle Assemblée, 11.69-70. (April, 1815): 182-183.

Lewis, Matthew. The Castle Spectre. London: Printed for J. Bell, 1798, c1797.

Also available via Internet Archive and University of Michigan Library.

Lewis, Matthew. The Isle of Devils. Kingston, Jamaica: 1827.

Also available via University of Virginia Library.

"Man-Eating and Man-Sacrificing". In All the Year Round (18 July, 1885): 421-426.

Also available via Internet Archive.

Marly: Or a Planter’s Life in Jamaica. Glasgow: Richard Griffin & Company, 1828.

Also available via Internet Archive.

Marryat, Florence. The Blood Of the Vampire. [1897]. Brighton: Victorian Secrets, 2010.

Also available via Gutenberg and Internet Archive. Audio version available via ​​LibriVox.

“Old Stories Retold: Driven to Cannibalism”. In All the Year Round (18 May 1872): 12-18.

Also available via Internet Archive.

Poe, Edgar Allan. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. Harper: New York, 1838.

Also available via Google Books.

Reid, Thomas Mayne. The Quadroon: or, a Lover’s Adventure in Louisiana. London: George W. Hyde, 1856.

Also available via Internet Archive and The Louisiana Anthology.

“Selico: An African Novel”. In Le Belle Assemblée, 1.8 (1 September, 1806): 417-421.

Sansay, Leonora. Secret History: or, the Horrors of St. Domingo. Philadelphia: Bradford & Inskeep, 1808.

Also available via Internet Archive and Project Gutenberg.

Smith, Charlotte. The Story of Henrietta. Edited by Janina Nordius. Kansas City: Valancourt Books, 2012.

See also vol. 2 of Charlotte Smith’s Letters of A Solitary Wanderer (1800).

“Stories of the Black Men”. In All the Year Round (30 November, 1861): 234-237.

Twain, Mark. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. New York: Charles L. Webster and Company, 1885.

Wilson, Harriet E. Our Nig; Or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, in a Two-story White House, North. 1859. Via Project Gutenberg.

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