The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (Barnes & Noble Digital Library): (or Gustavus Vassa, The African, Written by Himself)

by Olaudah Equiano, Rebecka Rutledge Fisher (Introduction)

Overview

This edition includes a modern introduction and a list of suggested further reading. The Interesting Narrative, published in 1789 to considerable acclaim, has been compared to Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and reviewed by Mary Wollstonecraft. Equiano's life and work took shape in an era of revolution—against slavery, against injustice, against tyranny. Moreover, Equiano's Narrative was deeply informed by the forces that have given the modern nation-state its present recognizable characteristics. Equiano effectively challenges concepts of Englishness as an absolute ethnic category. His narrative stands as one of the earliest written works of literature by an African of the diaspora, and is certainly one of the earliest works in Western history to combine the genres of spiritual autobiography, social protest, abolitionist tract, and travelogue in such a way as to mark him a significant commentator upon and a vocal critic of the ideals of the Enlightenment.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781411468399
Publisher:	Barnes & Noble
Publication date:	03/13/2012
Series:	Barnes & Noble Digital Library
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
File size:	1 MB
Age Range:	3 Months to 18 Years

About the Author

Olaudah Equiano (1745-1797) was born in what is today known as Essaka, Nigeria, to a well-respected Igbo family. Much of our knowledge of him emerges from his own pen. He tells of being captured from his home at about age ten. He was sold numerous times before an English naval officer serving as captain of a West Indian merchant vessel purchased him.Captain Michael Pascal renamed him Gustavus Vassa, after a sixteenth-century Swedish monarch. With Pascal, Equiano served as gunmate and powder boy in the Royal Navy, fighting in several key battles during the Seven Years War. His free time was spent immersed in books, most often the Bible.