The Culture of English Antislavery is an intervention in the lively international debate of recent years about the relation of anti-slavery in Britain to the deep changes of the period of the Industrial Revolution. It offers an account of the overall shape of organized anti-slavery from its beginnings in the 1780s and provides new perspectives from which to assess contending interpretations of antislavery.

This book provides a fresh overall account of organised antislavery by focusing on the active minority of abolutionists throughout the country. The analysis of their culture of reform demonstrates the way in which alliances of diverse religious groups roused public opinion and influenced political leaders. The resulting definition of the distinctive 'reform mentality' links antislavery to other efforts at moral and social improvement and highlights its contradictory relations to the social effects of industrialization and the growth of liberalism.