This eight-volume set brings together primary texts which reveal the complexity of opinion about abolition and emancipation during this period. Volume I collects whole works and selections which represent everything written by late 18th-century and early 19th century black writers. Volume II presents documents from the abolition debate. Volumes III (poetry), IV (drama), and V (fiction) contain the most influential and representative literary pieces. Volume VI reprints excerpts from slavery's representations in narrative. Finally, Volumes VII and VIII document how the growing mass of ethnological, scientific, botanical, epidemiological, and geographical data supplied a ready source for all kinds of schemes designed to reduce strangeness to order. The index is in Volume VIII. Distributed by Ashgate. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).