After the Narrative: Equiano’s Contribution to the Transatlantic Abolitionist Movements

The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself was first published in London in March 1789. Over the past thirty-five years, historians, literary critics, and the general public have increasingly recognized Equiano as one of the most accomplished English-speaking writers of his times, and unquestionably the most accomplished author of African descent. Despite widespread interest in The Interesting Narrative, however, very few historians or literary critics have investigated the roles that the author, his book, and their subsequent reception history played first in the movement to abolish the transatlantic slave trade, and after 1807 in the drive to outlaw slavery.  This talk is intended in part to correct the error I made in my recent biography of Equiano when I wrote that “after 1857 Equiano and his Interesting Narrative seem to have been forgotten on both sides of the Atlantic for more than a century.”