Thomas Clarkson was a deacon in the Church of England who devoted his life to the abolition of the slave-trade. His first essay, written at the age of 26, An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species (1786), led to his meeting with Granville Sharp and William Wilberforce and joining them in forming the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1787. Clarkson tirelessly collected evidence of the degrading and inhuman nature of the trade and published a series of works which had a powerful propagandist effect (please see our works listing). After the slave trade was abolished in the British Empire in 1807, Clarkson wrote a two-volume history of the movement, The History of the Rise, Progress, and …
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Citation: Editors, Litencyc. "Thomas Clarkson". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 12 December 2007 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5803, accessed 23 November 2024.]
