(Black History) (Slavery) The Slaves; Or, the Benefit Repaid. To Which Is Added, the Fairy; Or, a Good Action Rewarded. Gainsborough: Printed by and for Henry Mozley, circa 1810. FIRST EDITION.
48mo - 4" x 2-1/2". 31, [1] pp. Illustrated with a woodcut frontispiece and 8 internal text woodcuts printed in black. Original publisher's string-bound tan paper wrappers, with an individual woodcut illustration and rhyming verse printed in black to both the front and rear wrappers.
The structural and physical condition of the volume is VERY GOOD. The original paper wrappers remain intact, exhibiting light surface soiling, minor wear along the spine fold, and expected rounding to the fore-edge corner tips. Internally, the leaves show uniform light soiling consistent with juvenile handling. Administrative markings are restricted to a small ink stamp "67494" and an early pen notation "085 / MOZ" on the unprinted title-page verso. Textual anomalies are limited to a short closed tear in the center of leaves [5]-6, which does not result in paper loss.
Early Abolitionist Juvenile Fiction and Provincial Chapbook Printing
This miniature provincial chapbook serves as an unrecorded example of early nineteenth-century anti-slavery juvenile fiction engineered to cultivate abolitionist sentiment within the British nursery. Published by Henry Mozley in Gainsborough during the immediate wake of the Slave Trade Act of 1807, the primary narrative utilizes the didactic "benefit repaid" trope to argue the moral humanity of enslaved populations, framing reciprocal kindness between races as an ethical mandate. The primary text is supplemented by a secondary cautionary tale, The Fairy; Or, a Good Action Rewarded, contrasting the moral temperaments of two sisters.
The work is illustrated with a historically compelling woodcut frontispiece depicting a European sailing ship approached by canoes populated with Africans armed with bows and arrows—a rare contemporary juvenile representation of indigenous coastal resistance to transatlantic enslavement vessels. The eight internal woodcuts reinforce the text through bold, block-printed vignettes. This publication reflects the strategic turn by British abolitionist printers to utilize cheap, ephemeral street literature and chapbooks to embed humanitarian principles into popular working-class and adolescent reading habits.
Bibliographic Status, Unrecorded Solitary Census, and Scarcity
This copy represents a significant discovery within the field of historic transatlantic black diaspora bibliography. The title is entirely unrecorded across all major international library catalogs, union lists, and commerce indices. A current global institutional sweep via the OCLC/WorldCat database confirms zero holdings worldwide; it is similarly absent from the comprehensive digital and physical files of the British Library, and shows no record of appearance within the Auction & Book Sales Archive.
Issued as a fragile, non-casebound miniature chapbook intended for immediate consumption by children, its survival rate is practically zero, establishing this specimen as the unique extant representative of its printing.
AN UNRECORDED AND APPARENTLY UNIQUE SURVIVAL OF A PRE-EMANCIPATION BRITISH ANTI-SLAVERY JUVENILE CHAPBOOK, CONSTITUTING A CRITICAL PRIMARY ARTIFACT FOR INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH INTO PROVINCIAL ABOLITIONIST PRINTING, NINETEENTH-CENTURY DIASPORIC ICONOGRAPHY, AND DIDACTIC NURSERY LITERATURE.
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