"Slavery, Empathy, and Pornography is interdisciplinary, incorporating materials ranging from canonical literatures to the lowest forms of street publication. The central chapters cross-examine the slavery writings of Cowper and the major Romantic poets. English Radicals William Cobbett and John Thelwall, the Surinam texts of John Stedman, and the extensive yet neglected slavery writings of Harriet Martineau. The high Victorian social prophets Carlyle and Ruskin are seen to develop new racist discourses. The book also contains a radical new critique of the operations of slavery in Austen's Mansfield Park. The conclusion asserts that the repressed history of British slavery has worked its way into the cultural production of the West today in startling ways. Particular attention is paid to the relation between slavery, fetishism, and the bondage and pornographic industries."--Jacket.