Brings together, for the first time, pioneering literary works by African American authors who made a revolutionary impact on UK and Irish nineteenth-century transatlantic literary cultures and political histories.

Includes an in-depth introductory essay, author biographies, annotations, and detailed bibliographies in order to provide specialist and general audiences with the literary, political, historical, philosophical, and cultural contexts that were fundamental to nineteenth century Black transatlantic literary production.

The nineteen texts constitute radical declarations of Black artistic and political independence by bearing witness to each author’s determination to resist white racist attempts to script, edit and censor Black acts and arts of imaginative literary production.

This is the first scholarly anthology of nineteen narratives written by African American authors and published in Britain and Ireland in the nineteenth century.