SOURCE: Macdonald, D. L. “Pre-Romantic and Romantic Abolitionism: Cowper and Blake.” European Romantic Review 4, no. 2 (winter 1994): 163-82.

In the following essay, Macdonald compares the antislavery poetry of William Cowper and William Blake to highlight the differences in pre-Romantic and Romantic literary strategies.

Most historians now accept that the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade and the emancipation of the West Indian slaves were not (as Eric Williams famously argued) simply the inevitable results of economic processes, but the outcome of a political struggle (Walvin, Slaves 93-96). The struggle began in the mid-eighteenth century, when many Quakers freed their slaves. They set an important example: “Till this time,” as Thomas Clarkson put it, “it does not appear, that any bodies of men had collectively interested themselves in endeavouring to remedy the evil” (Essay vi). Moreover, many English Quakers were involved in banking and shipping, industries on which the trade...