Between the Covers

Unbound. First edition. Small broadside poem. Single sheet of glossy coated pink paper stock, measuring 5" x 4”, printed in gilt on recto only. Illustrated from an engraved vignette depicting two humming birds, one in flight, the other tending their nest. All edges gilt. Rubbed at extremities, with light soiling, very good.

At the time women’s abolitionist groups in England, of which there were many, had turned their attention to abolishing slavery in the British Colonies in Africa and the West Indies. The text of the poem, printed in two columns of 12 lines, begins: “As the small bird, that fluttering roves Among Jamaica’s tamarind groves, A feather’d busy bee, In note scarce rising to a song, Incessant, hums the whole day long, In slavery’s island, free… In Britain’s groves of oak; And to the peasant from the king, In every ear shall ceaseless ring ‘Free Afric from the yoke!’” A scarce publication unrecorded by either *OCLC* or *COPAC*.

Item #469828