Prophet against Slavery:Benjamin Lay, A Graphic Novel
The revolutionary life of an eighteenth-century dwarf activist who was among the first to fight against slavery and animal cruelty
Prophet against Slavery is an action-packed chronicle of a remarkable and radical individual. It is based on the award-winning biography by Marcus Rediker, which prompted the Quaker community that once disowned Lay to embrace him again after 280 years. Graphic novelist David Lester brings the full scope of Lay's activism and ideas to life.
Born in 1682 to a humble Quaker family in Essex, England, Lay was a forceful and prescient visionary. Understanding the fundamental evil that slavery represented, he employed guerrilla theatre tactics and direct action to shame slave owners and traders. The prejudice Lay suffered as a dwarf and a hunchback, as well as his devout faith, informed his passion for human and animal liberation. Exhibiting stamina, fortitude, and integrity in the face of the cruelties practiced against his 'fellow creatures', he was frequently a solitary voice speaking truth to power.
Lester's beautiful imagery and storytelling, accompanied by afterwords from Rediker and Paul Buhle, capture the radicalism, the humour, and the humanity of this uncannily modern figure. A testament to the impact each of us can make, Prophet against Slavery brings Lay’' prophetic vision to a new generation of young activists who today echo his call of 300 years ago: 'No justice, no peace!'
Reviews
Praise for The Fearless Benjamin Lay:
Admirers of Marcus Rediker’s splendid The Slave Ship will be delighted by this historian’s new book. Sailor, pioneer of guerrilla theater, and a man who would stop at nothing to make his fellow human beings share his passionate outrage against slavery, Benjamin Lay has long needed a modern biographer worthy of him, and now he has one.
Praise for The Fearless Benjamin Lay:
A modern biography of the radical abolitionist Benjamin Lay has long been overdue. With the sure hand of an eminent historian of the disfranchised, Marcus Rediker has brought to life the wide-ranging activism of this extraordinary Quaker, vegetarian dwarf in a richly crafted book. In fully recovering Lay’s revolutionary abolitionist vision, Rediker reveals its ongoing significance for our world.
Praise for The Fearless Benjamin Lay:
The unswerving eighteenth-century abolitionist Benjamin Lay, maligned when not ignored for many generations, has at last found his sympathetic biographer. In this captivating must-read book, Marcus Rediker shows that Lay’s disfigured body contained a mind of steel and a heart overflowing with compassion for victims of the Atlantic slave trade. Lay’s place in the annals of American reform is now secure.
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Praise for The Fearless Benjamin Lay:
Lay’s antinomian radicalism has been wonderfully excavated by Marcus Rediker in this eloquent testament. -
Praise for The Fearless Benjamin Lay:
This turbulent life of a seafarer, glove maker, and preacher is the stuff of legend, recovered with panache by Rediker. -
Praise for The Fearless Benjamin Lay:
In this vivid life, Rediker explains how Benjamin Lay, the dwarf, became an iconic prophet of abolitionism. Lay lived in the utmost simplicity in a cave, eating no meat, and wearing only clothes he had made himself. Rediker shows how Lay, despite his modesty, used spectacle to dramatise the cruelty of slavery, and explains why, despite clashes with the wealthy, Lay died at seventy-seven with an estate worth over £500, which he bequeathed to the poor. The Fearless Benjamin Lay offers a master class in eighteenth-century radical micro-history, showing how much is revealed by the scattered details of one man’s life, a short man but a political and moral giant. -
Praise for The Fearless Benjamin Lay:
Like most satisfying biographies, Rediker’s is part group biography, offering sketches of the lives with which Lay's intersected.Times Literary Supplement -
Praise for The Fearless Benjamin Lay:
It is a pretty safe bet that for every 1,000 people who know of William Wilberforce, no more than the odd one might have heard of Benjamin Lay. But if anyone deserves to muscle in on the mildly self-congratulatory and largely middle-class pantheon of Abolitionist Saints, it is the gloriously improbable and largely forgotten Quaker throwback and hero of Marcus Rediker's generous and absorbing act—his own phrase—of 'retrospective justice'., Spectator -
Praise for The Fearless Benjamin Lay:
Rediker has done a valuable service in rescuing Lay from obscurity ... I suspect there will be few readers who won’t want to boil a celebratory turnip to salute what Benjamin Lay achieved in the course of his long and remarkable life., Daily Mail -
Praise for The Fearless Benjamin Lay:
This is micro-history at its best, a careful concentration on one small man’s activities as a way of testing out the limits of what could be thought, known and felt in the hive-mind of early modern America., Guardian (Best biographies of the year 2017) -
Praise for The Fearless Benjamin Lay:
It is a pretty safe bet that people reading this excellent biography of the Quaker radical Benjamin Lay will not have heard of him or his exploits. Hopefully because of Marcus Rediker’s hard work and perseverance more people will now know of this extraordinary figure., A Trumpet of Sedition -
Praise for The Fearless Benjamin Lay:
Historian Marcus Rediker’s excellent book … illuminates the life of this extraordinary man., New Statesman