Fanny Eaton (1860) Simeon Solomon
Basha Felika and Dejatch Alamayou (1868) Julia Margaret Cameron
Recently, my daughter asked me when slavery ended in the UK, and we spent rather along time saying 'well, that's a complicated question...' but on the face of it, within the UK, slavery had ended by the time Victoria ascended to the throne in 1837 (with the caveat of the Indian Slavery Act of 1843). American slaves had to wait until 1865 before they saw any change in their position (again, even then it is very complicated). Maybe then it isn't surprising that escaped slaves such as Moses Roper traveled to the UK to lecture on their experiences and publish books on the subject.
The extraordinary Ellen Craft
The story of Ellen Craft is remarkable - she and her husband, fellow slave William, escaped Georgia in 1848, with her dressed as a white man and her husband pretending to be her servant. They finally settled in England in 1869. These true stories of heroism and survival make Green's book both harrowing but also heartwarming that the brave and resourceful Crafts could share their stories where so many were denied the chance.Uncle Tom and Little Eva (1866) Edwin Longsden Long
One of my favorite things about the book is that Green makes you look at something that you thought you knew from a different angle. I spend a fair amount of time reading about Merton Russell-Cotes, founder of the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery in Bournemouth, but at the same time as Merton was being a somewhat colourful character in Bournemouth, in Boscombe (now a part of Bournemouth) a gentleman called Thomas Lewis Johnson wrote and published Twenty-Eight Years a Slave. He died the same year as Merton and was apparently as well known as the Russell-Cotes family. Previously when I thought of the Bournemouth of the turn of the twentieth century, I had never considered that it would include such an important figure, and now have to find out if he and Merton ever met. That is a pretty decent book that makes me want to do more research.
The American Slave (1862) John Bell
Black Americans in Victorian Britain by Jeffrey Green is available from Pen and Sword Books and all good books shops.