Abolitionism at Home: Women, Music, and Material Culture in Britain, 1760 to 1833

FAIN: FEL-295368-24

Julia Hamilton
Columbia University (New York, NY 10027-7922)

Research and writing leading to a book about antislavery songs owned by British women in the 18th and 19th centuries and the British abolitionist movement.

This book uses a little-known corpus of British antislavery songs to tell a new cultural history of abolitionism that is centered on the experiences of women and situated in the home. I focus on the “social life” of antislavery scores owned by British women of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, delving into contemporary practices of shopping for scores, performing in domestic concerts, and creating personal volumes of sheet music. While I do discuss the lyrics of these songs, highlighting their problematic portrayals of enslaved Africans, my study moves beyond earlier literary studies that have focused on lyrics alone. Using letters and personal copies of antislavery scores, I uncover the names of women whose abolitionist activities had previously been lost to history. I argue that these women used their everyday musical activities to remind their friends and family members of the horrors of chattel slavery and to advocate for its abolition.