ABSTRACT
The son of a military father who died of ‘the country fever’ upon reaching Jamaica, the heterodox clergyman Laurence Sterne popularised the discourse of sensibility and also criticised slavery as pernicious. Introducing himself in a letter written on 21 July 1766 as ‘one of those people whom the vulgar and illiberal call “Negurs”’, Sancho complimented Sterne’s sermon and also Sarah Scott’s portrait of a reform-minded planter in her novel, The History of Sir George Ellison. Sterne claims to have been coincidentally engaged in ‘writing a tender tale of the sorrows of a friendless poor negro-girl’ when he received Sancho’s letter. The novelist proclaims that the tale is not just about Sancho’s ‘brethren’ but about his and everyone else’s. Sterne’s few interventions were notable for their sentimental attitude, one that some anti-slavery advocates adopted, even as others, such as Wilberforce, deplored his indecency.
