Literary Contexts

In accounts like Adam Hochschild’s Bury the Chains, historians have placed both Equiano and his narrative within this abolitionist context. And they have done so with good reason: The titular “other writings” in the Penguin edition, as well as much of the material in the appendices of the Norton edition, of The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings consist largely of letters related to the publication and promotion of his book, letters to newspapers engaging in the public debate on the slave trade, and communications with other abolitionist actors.

Had Equiano solely become the leading African voice for the abolition of the British slave trade, he would be worth the deep attention he has already received. In addition to its historical significance, it is worth noting that The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano was a literary sensation when it was first published in 1789. The prince of Wales was among its list of subscribers, as were several leaders of the British abolitionist cause, including William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson, and Granville Sharp. The book went through eight editions while Equiano was alive (and one more was published after his death in 1797).

Equiano’s narrative was, and is, remarkable for many reasons. Although the Interesting Narrative was not the first example in English of a published narrative of a former African slave, it may have been the first to document the harrowing Middle Passage at length and in great detail. Equiano’s life was full of an almost unbelievable amount of fantastic details: he fought in sea battles against the French on a British warship in the Seven Years War, he pressed white Britons into service as a member of a naval press gang, he bought his freedom by trading up glass trinkets in the West Indies, he oversaw the importation of other African slaves as a clerk on a plantation in Central America, he traveled to Turkey and to the North Pole, he learned to play the French horn and properly cut hair. This profound, and profoundly strange, account of a life provides many potential avenues for literary analysis.