The Fearless Benjamin Lay

The Quaker Dwarf Who Became the First Revolutionary Abolitionist

By: Marcus Rediker

Narrated by: Cornell Womack

Length: 7 hrs and 2 mins

Publisher's summary

The little-known story of an eighteenth-century Quaker dwarf who fiercely attacked slavery and imagined a new, more humane way of life

The Fearless Benjamin Lay chronicles the transatlantic life and times of a singular and astonishing man - a Quaker dwarf who became one of the first ever to demand the total, unconditional emancipation of all enslaved Africans around the world. He performed public guerrilla theater to shame slave masters, insisting that human bondage violated the fundamental principles of Christianity. He wrote a fiery, controversial book against bondage that Benjamin Franklin published in 1738. He lived in a cave, made his own clothes, refused to consume anything produced by slave labor, championed animal rights, and embraced vegetarianism. He acted on his ideals to create a new, practical, revolutionary way of life.

©2017 Marcus Rediker (P)2017 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

stunning story

How is this story coming too light only now!? a compelling (and fast) read about a man well ahead of his times.

I highly recommend it!

I loved this book. Womack's reading is clear, professional and well recorded. His cadence is highly formal and evokes documentaries and news reports. Maybe too formal. His cadence seems repetitive and dry, as if the book went into Womack's eyes and out of his mouth without truly passing though his brain.

Very informative, nice narration

I learned a lot and enjoyed the biography. It brought to life an important work of art and an a singular and important life. The shenanigans in England are a bit dry but contained an important warning to us all.

Important story, strange narration

An important historiographical intervention in the early history of Atlantic abolition. Worth a read or listen.
Only obstacle I encountered was the incompatibility of the narration with the pace of the biography.
It was weird to hear the exegetical passages on Lay's "All Slave Keepers, Apostates" in the narrator's epic, 90's movie-trailer voice. Otherwise, an excellent and informative book/performance.

If you like this book, you might like:
"The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano", also available on Audible.

Benjamin Lay deserved better

Had to give up at chapter 4. the glimpses you get of his life may be interesting but you have to wade through hours of dull administrative info: acronyms, processes, petty bureaucracy. And the narrator reads it with all the passion of a satnav. It makes it painful. Listening with my partner, he leaned over and pressed the pause button exclaiming, "it's just boring". Annoyingly audible will not let me return it, so my advice is, don't waste the credits. If you want to know about the man, I think a quick Google or some time on tiktok will suffice.