The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, written in 1789, details its writer's life in slavery, his time spent serving on galleys, the eventual attainment of his own freedom and later success in business. Including a look at how slavery stood in West Africa, the book received favorable reviews and was one of the first slave narratives to be read widely.
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself was the first work that influenced the nineteenth-century genre of slave narrative autobiographies. Written and published by Equiano, a former slave, it became a prototype for those that followed. Kidnapped in Africa as a child, Equiano was transported to the Caribbean and then to Virginia, bought by a Quaker shipowner, and placed in service at sea. Aboard various American and British ships, he sailed throughout the world, and he continued to do so after having purchased his freedom in 1766. Once settled in London, he fought tirelessly to end slavery. This edition of Equiano's Narrative places the text in the center of abolitionist activity in the late eighteenth century. Equiano knew many of the leading abolitionist figures of his time, and this edition allows readers to trace the common ideas and cross-influences in the works of the political and literary figures who fought for the end of slavery in America and England. The original 1789 text of the narrative has been used for the Broadview edition with Equiano's subsequent emendations included in the appendices.
Edited and with Notes by Shelly Eversley Introduction by Robert Reid-Pharr In this truly astonishing eighteenth-century memoir, Olaudah Equiano recounts his remarkable life story, which begins when he is kidnapped in Africa as a boy and sold into slavery and culminates when he has achieved renown as a British antislavery advocate. The narrative “is a strikingly beautiful monument to the startling combination of skill, cunning, and plain good luck that allowed him to win his freedom, write his story, and gain international prominence,” writes Robert Reid-Pharr in his Introduction. “He alerts us to the very concerns that trouble modern intellectuals, black, white, and otherwise, on both sides of the Atlantic.” The text of this Modern Library Paperback Classic is set from the definitive ninth edition of 1794, reflecting the author’s final changes to his masterwork.
The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars. Western literary study flows out of eighteenth-century works by Alexander Pope, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Frances Burney, Denis Diderot, Johann Gottfried Herder, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and others. Experience the birth of the modern novel, or compare the development of language using dictionaries and grammar discourses. ++++ The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++ John Rylands University Library of Manchester N017160 With a list of Irish subscribers and a list of English subscribers. Dublin: printed for, and sold by, the author. Sold also at the Dublin Chronicle Office, by W. Sleater, and the other booksellers in Dublin, 1791. xxiv,359, [1]p., plate: port.; 8°
In the mid 1700s, around the age of eleven, Olaudah Equiano and his sister were kidnapped from their village in equatorial Africa and sold to slavers. Within a year he was aboard a European slave ship on his way to the Caribbean. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African was published by the author in 1789 and is part adventure story, part treatise on the corrupting power of slavery, and part tract about the transformative powers of Christianity. Equiano’s story takes him from Africa to the Americas, back across the Atlantic to England, into the Mediterranean, and even north to the ice packs, on a mission to discover the North-East passage. He fights the French in the Seven Year’s War, is a mate and merchant in the West Indies, and eventually becomes a freedman based in London. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano was one of the first popular slave narratives and was reprinted eight times in the author’s lifetime. While modern scholars value this account as an important source on the life of the eighteenth-century slave and the transition from slavery to freedom, it remains an important literary work in its own right. As a valuable part of the African and African-American canons, it is still frequently taught in both English and History university courses. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.
An 18-century best-seller, it is a magnificent revolutionary abolitionist autobiography, a tale of spiritual quest and a treatise on religion, politics and economics written by a former native African slave. It traces the common ideas and cross-influences in the lives of the political and literary figures who fought for the end of slavery. Everlasting historical work!
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