The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano

Olaudah Equiano 1789

This life story follows a man through enslavement, sea voyages, and the purchase of his freedom. He describes saving forty pounds to buy his freedom while working aboard trading ships.

283 pages 5h 29m reading time

Why it lasts

  • One of the most important early slave narratives, the life stories written by people who had been enslaved.
  • Describes the horrors of the slave ship crossing from Africa to the Americas from the point of view of someone who survived it.
  • Argues that Africans are fully equal to Europeans in mind and feeling, and that the slave trade is cruel and against Christian teaching.
  • Helped build public support for the movement to end the British slave trade, which Parliament banned in 1807.
  • Set the pattern for the slave narratives that followed, and is now seen as a founding work of Black writing in English.

Behind the book

  • Records question his birthplace

    A baptism record and a navy list name South Carolina as his birthplace, so some doubt his African childhood.

  • Paid for by subscribers

    He paid for the first printing with advance buyers, including the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York.

  • Sold by the author himself

    He traveled across Britain and Ireland selling copies in person, and it went through nine editions while he lived.

  • Answered his attackers

    When newspapers claimed in 1792 he was born in the Caribbean, he printed letters in his defense in later editions.