Martin Farquhar was born in London On 17th July 1810. He was educated first at Charterhouse and then Christ Church Oxford. Among his fellow students were the infamous Earl Of Elgin and the future Prime Minister WE Gladstone. His Proverbial Philosophy was eventually a long series and a big seller of almost a million copies in the United States. Her we look at his poems and concern ourselves here with a slim collection that spoke out about slavery. It helped to illustrate the stain that had ingrained itself into the social and political fabric. Although outlawed by Britain many years before these writings it was as endemic in many parts of the world then as it still is today. At the end of his life he vanished into obscurity and nowadays his work is almost forgotten. He died in November 1889 at Albury in Surrey. On his gravestone are the words: “Although he is dead, he will speak.”
