Author: Boyd, John
Biography:
BOYD, John (fl 1829-36)
No genealogical records have yet been found for him, but Boyd's title-pages identify him as a free man of colour living in the island of New Providence in the Bahamas. He describes himself as having only rudimentary schooling, with no knowledge of classical literature except in translation, but he declares his conviction that the "highly improved state of British literature" makes a knowledge of other languages unnecessary. As a part of the educational reforms of the abolitionist Governor James Carmichael-Smyth, who served in the post 1829-33 and who particularly admired Boyd's handwriting, he was made Clerk of the Visitors of the King's School. His first collection of poems was published in the Bahamas. The second, published "for the author's benefit" in Exeter, includes an introductory essay by C. R. Nesbitt, Registrar of the Government of the Bahamas, in which he expains the political context and significance of Boyd's achievement and solicits support for a remarkable, self-taught, but impoverished man. Boyd is not known ever to have left his native country. The last record of him dates from 1836, in despatches from the Governor at the time, enclosing a letter from Boyd ("a gentleman of colour") with a book by the American anti-slavery campaigner William Jay--probably his 1835 Inquiry into the American Colonization and American Anti-Slavery Societies. (John Boyd, "Introduction," Poems on Various Subjects; John M. Trainor, "Education in the Bahamas 1821-1836: A Prelude" [2008], accessed at journals.sfu.ca 22 Dec. 2017; NA CO 23/96/24) HJ