In this revelatory study Gretchen Gerzina doesn"t so much dispel the myth that the black presence in England is a recent phenomenon as utterly abolish it. For many centuries, reaching a peak in the 18th century, England was home to a large and highly visible black population (some 20,000 in London alone in 1768), yet their existence has largely been ignored by subsequent chroniclers. Drawing on contemporary sources, including some surprisingly familiar ones (Boswell, Mrs Piozzi), Gerzina has managed both to reverse this neglect and shed what little available light there is on the lives of these forgotten people. To their contemporaries they were an accepted and, for the most part, an acceptable presence; to us they are only dimly perceived in the background of 18th-century life: literally, as figures in portraits, figuratively as stock characters in plays or objects of satire for the caricaturists. But some stand out from that anonymity common to the poor of all nations, black or white: Francis Barber, for example, Samuel Johnson"s much-loved servant to whom the great Doctor bequeathed his private papers; or the well-educated and much-respected Igantius Sancho whose letters, published posthumously, caused a sensation among literary Londoners. Gerzina"s account of the evolution of racism, from a largely class-based reaction against seeing servants getting ideas above their station to the pitiless persecution of skin colour, is given added poignancy by accounts of racial integration and harmony before the battle to end the slave trade polarised opinion. Ironically, perhaps, it was the abolition of slavery that caused the black population of England to fade from public consciousness. Gerzina"s account of the last days of slavery is valuable in itself, but this book is just as recommendable for its treasurable character-studies of 18th-century life. --Mark Walker