English Trader, Indian Maid

On March 13th, 1711, an article appeared in "The Spectator about Thomas Inkle, a young and aspiring English trader cast ashore in the Americas, who is saved from violenct death by Yarico, a beautiful Indian maiden. When he and Yarico become lovers, Inkle promises to clothe her in silks and trasport her in carriages when he returns with her to England. Some months later, they are picked up after Yarico succeeds in signalling a passing English ship. But upon reaching Barbados, Inkle immediately sells Yarico into slavery - raising the price he demands when he learns that Yarico is pregnant with his child. Based on a real life account in Richard Ligon's "History of Barbados", published half a century earlier, the "Spectator" story caused a sensation as debate intensified over slavery in the British colonies - and it would be told and retold for decades as perhaps the most compelling "folk epic" of its age. In this volume, the editor has assembled the main English versions of this once-famous story, including a rediscovered poetical epistle by Charles James Fox, one of th eleading parliamentary promoters of the cause of abolition.As well as George Colman the Younger's comic opera - considered by some the earliest English social problem play - the book contains retellings from the Caribbean and from America, where the story has close affinities with the tale of Pocahontas.