Olaudah Equiano in the City

Equiano lived at numerous addresses in and around the City of London while writing and selling his Interesting Narrative — a foundational text of British abolitionism. Olaudah Equiano (c. 1745–1797) — also known as Gustavus Vassa — moved between addresses across the City and East End in the 1780s and 1790s, including Riding House Lane (now Riding House Street), Tottenham Street, and lodgings in Aldgate. He sold copies of his autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, by subscription, travelling Britain to drum up readers among MPs, clergymen and abolitionist sympathisers.

The book ran to nine editions in his lifetime, was translated into Dutch, German and Russian, and shaped a generation of British abolitionist argument. Equiano was a leading member of the Sons of Africa, the first known Black political organisation in Britain.

People

• Olaudah Equiano

Themes

• Abolition
• Literature
• African diaspora

Place

• City of London
• Georgian

Hero image

• File: /media/people/olaudah-equiano.jpg
• Credit: W. Denton & D. Orme, 1789 (frontispiece engraving)
• License: CC0
• Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AOlaudah_Equiano_-_The_interesting_Narrative_of_the_Life_of_Olaudah_Equiano_(1789)%2C_frontispiece_-_BL.jpg

Sources

• Carretta, Vincent. Equiano, the African: Biography of a Self-Made Man. University of Georgia Press, 2005.
• Equiano, Olaudah. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano. London, 1789 — full text on Project Gutenberg. — https://www.gutenberg.org/files/15399/15399-h/15399-h.htm