2-835-320 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Title page and frontispiece from the autobiography of Olaudah Equiano (also known as Gustavus Vassa, c. 1745-1797). Enslaved as a child in the Eboe (Igbo) region of the Kingdom of Benin in Africa, Equiano was taken to the Caribbean and sold to a Royal Navy officer. He was sold twice more but purchased his freedom in 1766. As a freedman in London, Equiano supported the British abolitionist movement and was a member of the Sons of Africa, an abolitionist group composed of Africans living in Britain. Originally published in 1789, his book went through nine editions in his lifetime and helped gain passage of the British Slave Trade Act 1807, which abolished the slave trade. In 1792 Equiano married Susannah Cullen, an English woman, and they had two daughters. The book has a brown leather cover with gold colored lettering. A paper dust jacket with "Gustavus Vassa" on the front surrounds the leather cover. There are inscriptions on the front pastedown endpaper and the front endpaper. The book has 294 pages.