Friend Anthony Benezet
A Quick Guide to Materials (last updated, Oct. 2007)
Arranged somewhat in order of importance
Benezet Teaching (detail from PBS, Houghton)
Benezet on the web
With links to:
- the Anthony Benezet biography and bibliography at Brycchan Carey's web collection on Slavery, Emancipation, and Abolition and
- Project Gutenberg text of Some Historical Account of Guniea.
- Irv Brendlinger's overview for the Wesley Center for Applied Theology; includes the following nugget: "In 1743 he moved from Philadelphia to Germantown (now in the NW section of Philadelphia). At this time he became a trustee of the Charity School, whose purpose it was to educate poor children without payment. The Charity School later became the College of Pennsylvania, and eventually the University of Pennsylvania."
- See especially images of a four-page letter (7 mo. 1783, Philadelphia) to George Dillwyn of Burlington, NJ. Benezet expresses his interest in the situation of the Indians and his desire to do what he can to remove mistaken prejudices against them.
Page by page images of the following pamphlets:
- Short account of that part of Africa, inhabited by the Negroes : with respect
to the fertility of the country; the good disposition of many of the natives,
and the manner by which the slave trade is carried on, A (1762).
- Caution to Great Britain and her colonies : in a short representation of
the calamitous state of the enslaved Negroes in the British dominions (1784)
[distributed by London Quakers -- see page 23 of Views below].
- Views of American slavery, taken a century ago (1858) [with concise biography
of Benezet and reprints of "Caution and Warning to Great Britain" and
"A Short Account." The style of this anonymous presentation reminds
me of Wilson Armistead's 1859 edition of "Anthony Benezet."]
- Some historical account of Guinea : its situation, produce, and the general
disposition of its inhabitants : with an inquiry into the rise and progress
of the slave trade, its nature, and lamentable effects (1788).
- PDF edition transcribed from micro fiche: Early American Imprints 1639-1800
Edited by the American Antiquarian Society, Evans No. 10505.
- With a fine overview of the life, in Pennsylvania History 66 (1999), 86--112 [full text pdf].
- Journal of Negro History 2 (January 1917): 37-50 [heavily sourced to Vaux and Clarkson].
- Benezet is named several times in this survey of "colonial" education, including a cautionary recollection about his support for a scheme to establish a black colony "West of the Alleghanies."
- See also Chapter Two.
- Begins with an account of Quaker efforts to provide education to black students, "probably" led by Benezet.
- Biographical note with bibliography (IUPUI).
Three dates mention Benezet, beginning with:
- 1750: Anthony Benezet, Friends (Quaker) school teacher in Philadelphia, began teaching free blacks and slaves in his home at night. This action was suspended during the American Revolutinonary War, but recreated once the war was over. Richard Allen and Absalom Jones were graduates of Benezet's school.
- The famous Anthony Benezet, a Quaker in Philadelphia, has left us a noble example of what may be done for conscience' sake. . . .
- Benezet's first biographer, Roberts Vaux, obtained three letters by Benezet now part of the Vaux Family Papers.
- Forten was the son of Thomas and Sarah Forten and the grandson of slaves. He was raised in Philadelphia and educated in Anthony Benezet's Quaker school for colored children.
Signature from 1783 letter to Dillwyn (Haverford)
Benezet in Print
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A welcome collection of letters and tracts with introductory biography. Brendlinger arrives at Benezet through scholarship on John Wesley and the British antislavery movement.
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Reprint of Armistead's 1859 London edition of Anthony Benezet: From the Original Memoir, Revised, with Additions. Brookes describes this book as not much different from the 1817 memoir by Roberts Vaux: "only a few additional letters, the record of a dream by Dr. Benjamin Rush, of Philadelphia -- most of all, transposed paragraphs, and least of all, new light on the character and works of Anthony Benezet."
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Kessinger reprint of 1858 publication. See the Cornell Anti-Slavery collection above for online link and description.
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Usually regarded as Benezet's classic work. See the Cornell Anti-Slavery collection above for online link and description.
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Reprint from Cornell Anti-Slavery Collection, see above.
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Reprint from Cornell Anti-Slavery Collection, see above.
Benezet Out of Print
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Biography, bibliography, and letters.
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With "Introductory Remarks" expressing the author's disappointment that he can ofer a "mere sketch" of the life of Anthony Benezet, because "no traces are discernible of the mass of important and interesting documents, which must have accumulated during more than fifty of the last years of his life." According to Brookes (1937 above), the Armistead edition of the Memoirs (1859) is only slightly rearranged and supplemented.