Narrative, of a five years' expedition, against the revolted negroes of Surinam, in Guiana, on the wild coast of South America

Narrative, of a five years' expedition, against the revolted negroes of Surinam, in Guiana, on the wild coast of South America
J. Johnson & Th. Payne, London 1813, 4° (20,5x26,5cm), xviii; 423 pp. (4 p.) and (2 p.) iv; 408 pp., 2 volumes bound.
Second edition, actually third. First published in 1796. Illustrated with 79 full-page plates and 3 folding maps, sixteen of them engraved by William Blake after Stedman's drawings.

Modern half sheep, red and green morocco title and marbled endpapers, light foxing to some pages, otherwise a good copy.

The Anglo-Dutch officer John Gabriel Stedman (1744-1797) put down slave rebellions in Surinam from 1772 to 1777. William Blake's impressive portraits of tortured slaves were widely distributed by the anti-slavery movement. Although in the service of the crown and therefore of the colonizers, Stedman was soon regarded as a prominent figure of the abolitionist movement. Publisher Joseph Johnson (1738-1809), one of the most important in the United Kingdom, became known for publishing the works of radical thinkers and dissidents such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine. As a member of the Society for Constitutional Information seeking to reform Parliament, he published numerous political works supporting the rights of slaves, Jewish people, women, prisoners, and other oppressed peoples around the world.