Black Victorians
Beyond the patrician vision of Victorian Britain traditionally advanced in our textbooks, there always existed another, more diverse Britain, populated by people of colour marking achievements both ordinary and extraordinary.
In this deeply researched and dynamic history, Woolf and Abraham reach into the archives to recentre our attention on marginalised Black Victorians, from leading medic George Rice to political agitator William Cuffay to abolitionists Henry ‘Box’ Brown and Sarah Parker Remond; from pre-Raphaelite muse Fanny Eaton to renowned composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. While acknowledging the paradoxes of Victorian views of race, Black Victorians demonstrates, with storytelling verve and a liberatory impulse, how Black people were visible and influential, firmly rooted in British life.
Dr Keshia N. Abraham, founder and president of The Abraham Consulting Agency, is an African diaspora scholar and JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion) educator committed to facilitating personal and organisational development through intercultural growth.
Dr John Woolf is a nineteenth-century specialist who read History at the University of Cambridge and the University of London, where he gained his PhD. He has researched and produced historical documentaries for the BBC. He was awarded the Tony Lothian Prize by the Biographers Club for his first book The Wonders.