William Wilberforce: A Biography

by Stephen Tomkins

Book Overview

In the 1780s, around 40,000 slaves a year were taken from Africa in British ships, on the notorious "Middle Passage," to the Caribbean. In 1787, under an oak tree in Kent, the British Prime Minister, William Pitt, invited his friend William Wilberforce to introduce a parliamentary bill outlawing the slave trade. Neither of them imagined a twenty-year political campaign that would consume the rest of Wilberforce's life.

Born in Hull, England,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802825931
• ISBN13: 9780802825933
• Release Date: June 2007
• Publisher: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.1" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

William Wilberforce

This is just as expected. I enjoyed the book and would recommend it to others.

Insightful

A thorough, inspiring, and insightful biography, although the author at times displays a mean-spirited judgmental streak.

Hull's Greatest Son

Tompkin's has written a sympathetic biography of the great reformer but the author shows a better understanding of Wiberforce's Christianity than he does of his conservatism. I think that the author is in danger of judging Wilberforce by 21st century standards over his opposition to trades unions, support of fewer of civil liberties in the face of threatened French invasion and the persecution of the promoters of atheistic books. Wilberforce's campaign to abolish the slave trade is the major theme of the book as it was the dominating thing in his life. But this history would be improved by the inclusion of a brief chronology or time line, putting Wilberforce's campaign and life in the world historic context of the time which included the American and French revolutions as well as the rise and fall of Napoleon. Wilberforce turned down all office and advancement including a peerage. He was ever a man of principle not party, a great philanthropist and saint whose perseverance was a greater gift than his oratory.