Strictures on a Life of William Wilberforce. With a correspondence between Lord Brougham and Mr. Clarkson; also a supplement, containing Remarks on the Edinburgh review of Mr. Wilberforce's Life, etc.

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First edition, presentation copy, inscribed on the original front free endpaper in a secretarial hand "from the author", noted above as to "M. Maurice", the recipient Clarkson's friend, the abolitionist Reverend Michael Maurice. Michael Maurice (1767-1855) was a Unitarian minister at Frenchay, near Bristol. "Mr. Maurice was a thorough advocate of civil and religious equality. He was associated with Clarkson and Macaulay (the father of Lord Macaulay, the historian), in their work of slavery abolition. Among his friends in the world of literature were Mrs. Barbauld, Colerige, Samuel Rogers, Dr. Price, and others. He lived a good life and was a man of high culture, with an open mind for all good, and retained his mental faculties to the last" (Rayner, pp. 165-6). Maurice worked energetically for the abolition of slavery, and wrote to a friend in "The more I read (of) all that falls in my way of the West Indies, the more I blame myself for my past inattention to the slave. Can slavery be justified in any form by a Christian? Can its continuance for any period be sanctified by a true friend of freedom?" (cited in Young, p. 61). Maurice's son Frederick Denison Maurice (1805-1872) - who was tutored for the Bar by Clarkson - helped found The Working Men's College, which remains as Europe's oldest extant centre for adult education. "It opened on 31 October 1854 in Red Lion Square, London, with some 120 students and with Maurice as its principal. Later it moved, first to Great Ormond Street and then to Crowndale Road. Besides Maurice's friends Vansittart Neale and Tom Hughes, the Tudor historian J. S. Brewer helped with the teaching, as too did John Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelite painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti. It was a product of Christian socialism and an expression of its ideals" (ODNB). The younger Maurice donated this volume to the library, where it retains its labels and stamps. Following de-accession it entered the collection of Hugh Brogan (1936-2019), British historian and biographer, with his bookplate to the front free endpaper verso. Brogan was Professor of History at University of Essex and wrote biographies of Arthur Ransome and De Tocqueville. Clarkson's book was published the year emancipation was completed in the British Empire. It comprises Clarkson's defence of himself following the aspersions cast by Wilberforce's sons in their own 1838 biography of their father that Clarkson was renumerated for his work against slavery. Simeon Rayner, The History & Antiquities of Pudsey, 1887; David Young, "F.D. Maurice's experience of Unitarianism and its place in his life and thought", PhD thesis, The Open University, 1989. Octavo (216 x 136 mm). Early 20th-century black cloth, spine lettered in gilt, original free endpapers preserved. 19th-century library stamps and slips of the Working Men's College (see note), contents otherwise clean. A good copy. Seller Inventory # 161002

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