Maria Edgeworth was born in Oxfordshire but spent most of her life in Ireland managing her father’s estate. Like other women writers of the time she began by writing for her friends and family before she achieved publication, producing letters, stories to amuse her siblings and plays that the whole family could perform. Once she achieved publication all of her stories were written with a moral purpose.

Her Popular Tales were originally published in 1804 and included ‘The Grateful Negro’ which was set in Jamaica around the central drama of a slave rebellion. The story was informed by Bryan Edward’s History of the British West Indies (1792). Edwards was a planter who sought the amelioration of slave conditions in preference to the more dramatic changes demanded by abolitionists which, he felt, would cause more harm than good. The central moral of ‘The Grateful Negro’ reveals that the planter who manages his estate in a humane way (Mr Edwards – pictured here trustingly lending his knife to Caesar, a black slave) escapes the rebellion unscathed while the bad planter, Mr Jeffries, narrowly escapes death and ends in penury. The story was published at a key moment in the slavery debate, just three years before the British trade in slaves was abolished.