Narrative of the Life of Olaudiah Equiano: A Norton Critical Edition / Edition 1

by Olaudah Equiano, Werner Sollors

Overview

The text of Equiano’s narrative presented here is that of the 1789 first edition.

It is accompanied by an introduction, maps, illustrations, and annotations. "Contexts" provides essential public writings on the autobiography, general and historical background, related travel and scientific literature, other eighteenth-century works by authors of African ancestry, and works debating the slave trade. "Criticism" includes six contemporary reviews and nine modern essays on the narrative by Paul Edwards, Charles T. Davis, Houston A. Baker, Jr., Angelo Costanzo, Catherine Obianju Acholonu, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Geraldine Murphy, Adam Potkay, and Robert J. Allison. A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are included.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393974942
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	12/08/2000
Series:	Norton Critical Editions Series
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	448
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Werner Sollors is Henry B. and Anne M. Cabot Professor of English Literature and African American Studies at Harvard University. He previously taught at Columbia University, the Free University of Berlin, and the Università degli Studi di Venezia. He is the author of Ethnic Modernism, Neither Black Nor White Yet Both: Thematic Explorations of Interracial Literature, Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and Descent in American Culture, and Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones: The Quest for a “Populist Modernism.” His edited works include A New Literary History of America (with Greil Marcus), African American Literary Studies: New Texts, New Approaches, New Challenges (with Glenda R. Carpio), The Multilingual Anthology of American Literature: A Reader of Original Texts with English Translations (with Marc Shell), Multilingual America: Transnationalism, Ethnicity, and the Languages of America, The Return of Thematic Criticism, Theories of Ethnicity: A Classical Reader, The Invention of Ethnicity, and the Norton Critical edition of The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself.

Table of Contents

	Introduction	ix
	Acknowledgments	xxxiii
	Map: Equiano's World	2
	Title page	5
	Frontispiece	6
	List of Subscribers	8
	Contents of Volumes I and II	16
	The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself	19
	Note on the Text	179
	Selected Variants	181
	Additions	181
	Selected Textual Differences between the First and Ninth Editions	189
	Contexts
	Illustration: Nautical Terms	193
	Related Public Writings
	From Cursory Remarks [upon James Ramsay's Antislavery Writing] (1785)	195
	Letter to James Tobin (January 28, 1788)	196
	From Humanity; or, the Rights of Nature (1788)	199
	Letter to the Author of the Poem on Humanity (June 27, 1788)	203
	Illustration: "Description of a Slave Ship"	204
	Letter to the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade (February 14, 1789)	205
	General Background
	From A Discourse upon the Origin and Foundation of the Inequality among Mankind (1755, transl. 1761)	206
	Historical Background
	[Humanitarianism, John Wesley, and Gustavus Vassa]	210
	[The Nature of the Protest]	216
	From Many Thousand Gone: The Ex-Slaves' Account of Their Bondage and Freedom	217
	[The Rupture and the Ordeal]	222
	Eighteenth-Century English Literature on Commerce and Slavery	228
	Illustrations: I. Cruikshank, William Blake, and Anonymous	242
	Travel and Scientific Literature
	From Some Historical Account of Guinea (1771)	250
	From A Voyage to the River Sierra-Leone (1788)	253
	From Essay on the Causes of the Different Colours of People in Different Climates (1744)	256
	Eighteenth-Century Authors of African Ancestry
	[From A Narrative] (1770, 1774)	259
	[A Captive of the Cherokees] (1785)	265
	[Reflections and Memories] (1787)	269
	The English Debate About the Slave Trade
	From An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African (1786)	277
	Letter to William Wilberforce Commenting on Gustavus Vassa (February 24, 1791)	281
	From Speech in the House of Commons (May 13, 1789)	282
	From The 1791 Debate in the House of Commons on the Abolition of the Slave Trade	283
	Antislavery Verse
	From The Dying Negro (1773)	288
	Criticism
	Early Reviews and Assessments
	From the Monthly Review (1789)	295
	From General Magazine and Impartial Review (1789)	296
	"W." [May Wollstonecraft] [Review of The Interesting Narrative] (1789)	296
	From Gentleman's Magazine (1789)	297
	Vassa (1808)	298
	[Olaudah Equiano] (1833)	301
	Modern Criticism
	From Introduction to The Life of Olaudah Equiano	302
	From The Slave Narrative: First Major Art Form in an Emerging Black Tradition	338
	From Figurations for a New American Literary History	339
	From The Spiritual Autobiography and Slave Narrative of Olaudah Equiano	348
	The Home of Olaudah Equiano--A Linguistic and Anthropological Search	351
	From The Trope of the Talking Book	361
	Olaudah Equiano, Accidental Tourist	368
	From Olaudah Equiano and the Art of Spiritual Autobiography	382
	Equiano's Narrative as an Abolitionist Tool	393
	Olaudah Equiano: A Chronology	397
	Selected Bibliography	401

Editorial Reviews

Olaudah Equiano's 1789 narrative tells the remarkable story of his childhood in Africa, his kidnapping and subsequent years as a slave and seaman, and his eventual road to freedom in the Caribbean and in England. The text reprinted here is that of the 1789 first edition, along with explanatory notes. The book includes letters, essays, and other documents from the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as contemporary and modern criticism, plus a chronology. Sollors teaches English literature and Afro-American Studies at Harvard University, where he also chairs the Department of History of American Civilization. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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