Dr John Oldfield is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Hull, where he was Director of the Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation between 2013 and 2020. He is the author of Popular Politics and British Anti-Slavery (1995) and Transatlantic Abolitionism in the Age of Revolution (2013).

• Introduction; 1. The making of an abolitionist; 2. Making history; 3. After abolition; 4. Emancipation; 5. The turbulent 1830s; 6. The remaking of an abolitionist; Conclusion.

'John Oldfield has brought his unparalleled knowledge of abolitionism to bear in this portrait of Thomas Clarkson. An uncompromising and indefatigable man, he took the struggle against the slave trade and slavery across the country from the 1780s to the 1820s, mobilising an antislavery public. Convinced of his capacity to speak for others, and of the need for white men to civilize Africans, an internationalist committed to work with governments, he fashioned himself anew in the changing times of the 1840s and remains a key figure in any attempt to grasp the complex history of Atlantic slavery and abolition.' Catherine Hall, author of Lucky Valley: Edward Long and the History of Racial Capitalism