Preface

Abstract

A Collection of Poems written by a slave recently liberated in the Island of Cuba, was presented to me in the year 1838, by a gentleman at Havana,¹ a Creole, highly distinguished, not only in Cuba, but in Spain, for his literary attainments. Some of these pieces had fortunately found their way to Havana, and attracted the attention of the literary people there, while the poor author was in slavery in the neighbourhood of Matanzas.² The gentleman to whom I have alluded, with the assistance of a few friends, of pursuits similar to his own—(for literature, even at the Havana, has its humanizing influence,) redeemed this poor fellow from slavery, and enabled him to publish such of his Poems, as were of a publishable kind in a country like Cuba, where slavery is under the especial protection, and knowledge under the ban of the censors of the press.