"Keeps its finger on the pulse of the rare book world" - William Reese

On the 3rd October Dominic Winter Book Auctions will be auctioning a rare and possibly unique poetry manuscript by the noted escaped slave and abolitionist lecturer and novelist William Wells Brown.

The one-page thirty-two-line poem entitled 'Fling Out The Anti-Slavery Flag' was recently discovered in a leather-bound Victorian scrap album seemingly kept by a lady or gentleman from south-west England with Quaker or Baptist convictions. The anonymous vendor spotted the poem by chance recently while flicking through one of his many scrap books and sent it in to Dominic Winter's Autographs department for checking. At the time neither the owner or the auctioneers thought it would turn out to be genuine.

 'Fling Out The Anti-Slavery Flag' was first published in 1848 in a collection of poems edited by Brown entitled 'The Anti-Slavery Harp; A Collection of Songs for Anti-Slavery Meetings', the year after Brown published his autobiographical slave narrative. The manuscript poem is signed, placed and dated in Bridgwater, 16th May 1851, and was written into the album on the occasion of a visit to Bridgwater by Brown and another fugitive slave, William Craft, who both spoke of their personal experiences and against the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 at the Public Rooms on the 12th and 13th May.

William Wells Brown is famous also as the author of the first African-American novel, 'Clotel; or, the President's Daughter' (1853), a novel based on Thomas Jefferson's slave daughter with Sally Hemings. This was published in four versions but no manuscript versions of any are extant. The survival of all Brown's manuscripts appear to be unknown, the only items traced being forty-two letters in Boston Public Library, three letters in Syracuse University and one letter in the Houghton Library at Harvard University. The appearance of this manuscript of Brown's first published poem at auction on the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the transatlantic Slave Trade is made even more pertinent by a current exhibition at Newcastle University eponymously entitled Fling out the Anti-Slavery Flag.

Auctioneer and manuscript cataloguer Chris Albury said "This is an incredible find and its extreme rarity has been a revelation. We have contacted every library and academic in Britain and USA who we thought might help and found nothing except printed texts and some letters. The manuscript has appeared in a mid-19th century scrap book or commonplace book compiled by and unidentified A.H. from the South West of England, and presumably written for the owner by Brown as a keepsake on his visit to Bridgwater. After careful analysis and comparison of the handwriting we are 100% certain that this really is in the hand of William Wells Brown. It is always impossible to precisely value potentially unique items like this. There are some high price records for Frederick Douglass letters and documents but nothing for William Wells Brown. It is a famous and classic anti-slavery anthem and made all the more poignant when you realise that it was written to be sung to the tune of Auld Lang Syne. Having been preserved in a scrap book for the last one hundred and fifty years its condition is fresh and perfect and it is a real major museum piece. We have provisionally estimated it will fetch £3,000-5,000 in our auction on the 3rd October and expect brisk bidding interest from institutions and private collectors in Europe and America."