Black England: A Forgotten Georgian History
Gretchen Gerzina
Sep 2022 · John Murray · Narrated by Debra Michaels
headphones
Audiobook
9 hr 30 min
Unabridged
family_home
Eligible
info
reportRatings and reviews aren’t verified Learn More
Want a 57 min sample? Listen anytime, even offline.
Add
About this audiobook
A powerful history of the forgotten lives of black Georgian Britain.
Georgian England had a large and distinctive black community. Yet all of them, prosperous citizens or newly freed slaves, ran the risk of kidnap and sale to plantations. Their dramatic, often moving story is told in this audiobook.
The idea that Britain became a mixed-race country after 1945 is a common mistake. Even in Shakespeare's England, black people were numerous enough for Queen Elizabeth to demand their expulsion. She was, perhaps, the first to fear that whites would lose their jobs, yet her order was ignored without ill effects.
By the eighteenth century, black people could be found in clubs and pubs, there were churches for black people, black-only balls and organisations for helping black people who were out of work or in trouble. Many of them were famous and respected: most notably Francis Barber, Doctor Johnson's esteemed manservant and legatee; George Bridgetower, a concert violinist who knew Beethoven; Ignatius Sancho, a correspondent of Laurence Sterne; and Francis Williams a Cambridge scholar. But many more were ill-paid, ill-treated servants or beggars, some resorting to prostitution or theft. And alongside the free world there was slavery, from which many of these black Britons escaped. The triumphs and tortures of black England, the ambivalent relations between the races, sometimes tragic, sometimes heart-warming, are brought to life in this well-researched and wonderfully listenable account.
The black population of Georgian England had been completely ignored until this audiobook changed the conversation, clearing the way for a new kind of history based on the experiences of ordinary people rather than the ruling classes.
(P) 2022 Hodder & Stoughton Limited
Georgian England had a large and distinctive black community. Yet all of them, prosperous citizens or newly freed slaves, ran the risk of kidnap and sale to plantations. Their dramatic, often moving story is told in this audiobook.
The idea that Britain became a mixed-race country after 1945 is a common mistake. Even in Shakespeare's England, black people were numerous enough for Queen Elizabeth to demand their expulsion. She was, perhaps, the first to fear that whites would lose their jobs, yet her order was ignored without ill effects.
By the eighteenth century, black people could be found in clubs and pubs, there were churches for black people, black-only balls and organisations for helping black people who were out of work or in trouble. Many of them were famous and respected: most notably Francis Barber, Doctor Johnson's esteemed manservant and legatee; George Bridgetower, a concert violinist who knew Beethoven; Ignatius Sancho, a correspondent of Laurence Sterne; and Francis Williams a Cambridge scholar. But many more were ill-paid, ill-treated servants or beggars, some resorting to prostitution or theft. And alongside the free world there was slavery, from which many of these black Britons escaped. The triumphs and tortures of black England, the ambivalent relations between the races, sometimes tragic, sometimes heart-warming, are brought to life in this well-researched and wonderfully listenable account.
The black population of Georgian England had been completely ignored until this audiobook changed the conversation, clearing the way for a new kind of history based on the experiences of ordinary people rather than the ruling classes.
(P) 2022 Hodder & Stoughton Limited
About the author
Gretchen Gerzina is the Paul Murray Kendall Chair in Biography, and Professor of English, at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She has been a tenured professor at Vassar College; Barnard College, Columbia University; and was the Kathe Tappe Vernon Professor of Biography at Dartmouth College where she was the first black woman to chair an Ivy League English Department. In addition, she was the Eastman Professor at Oxford University (Balliol College), Professor at Brunel University, and has directed three academic programs in African American Studies. She has written several acclaimed books including Carrington, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Mr and Mrs Prince and Black England. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Antiquarian Society, and appears often on radio and podcasts in Britain and America. She divides her time between Northampton, Massachusetts and Brooklyn, New York.
Rate this audiobook
Tell us what you think.
Listening information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can read books purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
