In my previous post, I introduced a now-forgotten 1812 novel entitled Yamboo, or, the North American Slave which is far more explicit than anything you'll find in Austen, the go-to girl for literary discussions about slavery in the long 18th century.
  As explained in my previous post, Yamboo is released from slavery and becomes a loyal and affectionate servant to the Beresford family in New Brunswick. He is introduced to Christianity. He begs to be allowed to accompany Colonel Beresford on a military campaign to India.
  Okay, to resume our story....   
  Colonel Beresford goes missing in battle at Seringapatam. While searching for him, Yamboo discovers a captain left for dead and brings rescuers to carry him off the battlefield. Colonel Beresford remains missing, but Captain Longford survives. Yamboo feels strongly drawn to serve and protect the captain, even though he has a reputation for being a quarrelsome and difficult man. “Is it,” he would sometimes mentally exclaim, “that Yamboo must love everybody who speak kind to him, or why him love Captain Longford so much? Him no like him good colonel, for he swear, scold, almost frighten every one; yet Yamboo feel he must love him, pray for him.”
     The captain, likewise, is surprised at the degree of gratitude and affection he feels for Yamboo. And yes, there is a reason for his affinity for the artless servant! When Yamboo tells his life story to the captain as he recuperates, the captain realizes that Yamboo is…  is… 

    Chawton House, the center for early women's writing and former home of Jane Austen's wealthy brother, has made a number of obscure novels available for study on their website. You would think that scholars would fall on a novel entitled ​Yamboo, or, the North American Slave, like a duck on a June bug. But no, they are too busy studying attitudes toward slavery by poring over Mansfield Park. Too bad there are no actual enslaved persons in Mansfield Park and slavery is never discussed, let alone condemned.
   How about looking at an 1812 novel which actually has an enslaved person as the titular character? Yamboo's anti-slavery message is far more explicit than Mansfield Park and serves as yet another refutation of the notion that authors, particularly women authors, couldn't talk about slavery back then. 
     Leaving aside the literary merits of the book and focusing on its message, we can say this in favour of Yamboo:

• The novel strongly asserts the titular character’s humanity.
• It confronts the issues of racial as well as class prejudice.
• Yamboo is portrayed as having agency; that is, he acts and is not merely acted upon...

     No, we don't need another review of the Netflix Persuasion but I want to make three observations. First and most important, the key way the movie is different from the novel--the film-makers embraced an approach which Austen herself rejected.
   In the book, after the concert where Wentworth gets jealous as he watches Mr. Elliot with Anne, she has the "delightful conviction" that Wentworth still cares for her, but she can see he is labouring under a misunderstanding. Ann worries about it. Due to social conventions, she cannot just walk up to him and let him know she still loves him. "How was such jealousy to be quieted? How was the truth to reach him? How, in all the peculiar disadvantages of their respective situations, would he ever learn of her real sentiments?"
    Yes, how? The only impediment to Anne's Happy Ever After is the social convention that women did not declare their affection to men. That's it. Well, better she run the risk of losing Wentworth again, than go against the social convention! Ann thinks it over...

  The many generous subscribers to Miss M.C. Squire’s first novel, The Beggar and His Benefactor (1809), must have wondered if they got their money’s worth. The book is only 120 pages long; it’s  the barest sketch of a novel grafted onto a travelogue about Plymouth and Cornwall. For a novel of the long 18th century, it's singularly devoid of sentiment or sensation.
    So why is Miss Squire my author of the week?  Well, for one thing, even trite and second-rate novels give me food for thought about the opinions and preoccupations of Austen's era. I'm learning about attitudes toward the class system and relations between the sexes. And for another, I'd like to bring Miss Squire to the attention of scholars because Squire uses people of color to teach a moral lesson in her first novel and her second novel includes a narrative of the slave trade. But first, a bit about the plots of her two novels...