Slavery; an influential narrative on the horrors of slavery first-hand, the book contained an account of Roper's enslavement and everything he had witnessed, as well as images of the torture he received while enslaved. According to Martha J. Cutter, the 1838 edition, which contained five illustrations, is one of the first illustrated slave narratives published by an enslaved African American. Cutter also contends that Roper's narrative "depicts forms of agency and subjectivity that move beyond the master's system of representation," layering "patterns of Christian symbolism that invoke martyrdom and even crucifixion onto and over a resistant and active enslaved body." The text therefore "performs a mode of Christian salvation that involves putting one's fate in the hands of God but one's feet in the position of running (away from, or out of, slavery)." The text's illustrations also "refigure formations of enslaved abasement common in abolitionist discourse through a type of liberation theology." In the book, Roper makes reference to the brutality of one of his enslavers, Mr. Gooch: My master gave me a hearty dinner, the best he ever did give me; but it was to keep me from dying before he had given me all the flogging he intended. After dinner he took me to a log-house, stripped me quite naked, fastened a rail up very high, tied my hands to the rail, fastened my feet together, put a rail between my feet, and stood on one end of it to hold me down; the two sons then gave me fifty lashes each, the son-in-law another fifty, and Mr. Gooch himself fifty more...This may appear incredible, but the marks which they left at present remain on my body, a standing testimony to the truth of this statement of his severity. During his lectures in Great Britain and Ireland, Roper retold these stories and exhibited tools used in the torture, including whips, chains and manacles to highlight the brutality of American slavery. During a meeting in Sheffield in April 1838, he exhibited whips and a device nicknamed a “negro flapper” used to beat field slaves. Activism in Britain and Ireland Roper's patronage in England was carefully planned; he carried letters of introduction to Rev. Dr. Fletcher, Rev. Dr. Morison and Rev. Dr. Raffles, through whom he met other sympathetic patrons, notably Rev. Dr. T. Price and Rev. F. Cox, and leading British abolitionists such as Thomas Fowell Buxton. Denied the