Freedom Seekers

Escaping from Slavery in Restoration London

by Simon P. Newman

Freedom Seekers reveals the hidden stories of enslaved and bound people who attempted to escape from captivity in 17th-century London. It was the joint winner of the prestigious Frederick Douglass Book Prize from Yale University’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition in 2023. The judges wrote: 'Freedom Seekers is a powerful testimony to people’s desire for liberty and control over their lives.'

Background Image: Wenceslaus Hollar, London. The Long View (1647). Call MAP L85c no.29 part 2. Used by permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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