The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano (1793): A Scholarly Introduction

By: Max Dodge-Harkins

The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano was first published by Olaudah Equiano by subscription in 1789 in London. Equiano self-published his narrative with The Stationer’s Company instead of selling his copyright to a bookseller-publisher. Although this was a risky move, he would go on to see high profits— his narrative saw several reprints during his life.

Despite support from subscribers and the strong sales of the narrative, it received mixed reviews when it was initially published. A 1789 article in the June issue of The Monthly Review was mixed; in the same month Richard Gough ironically described the narrative as "uninteresting" in The Gentleman’s Magazine. In the May 1789 issue of The Analytical Review, Mary Wollstonecraft was similarly unimpressed with the overall narrative but praised several aspects as well.

Scholarly arguments discussing The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano range from analyzing the symbolism of Equiano’s journey from slavery to freedom to questioning the veracity of the narrative. Early scholarship described Equiano’s journey to becoming an author in positive terms. These scholars argued that Equiano's kidnapping from his Eboe home and transportation to England benefited him, despite the fact he was forced into slavery. More modern scholars disagree with this school of thought: Frank Kelleter argues that “if we exclusively concentrate on the new transcultural forms of colonial communication—we risk forgetting that the original relationship between colonizing and colonized subjects is not mutual at all, but oppositional” (Kelleter 69). The relationships of power that Equiano finds himself in are of interest to scholars because of Equiano’s diverse experiences as a slave and as a free member of society.

More recently, scholarship has debated the “authenticity” of the narrative. Vincent Carretta contends that a baptismal record and a naval muster roll could prove that Equiano was not born in Africa as the narrative states. Carretta argues that Equiano’s records suggest that he was born in South Carolina, and the abolitionist movement’s use of the narrative provides a motive for the alleged deception. On the other hand, Wilfred Samuels and others argue that Carretta has placed too much emphasis on problematic archival documents as evidence, while Cathy Davidson suggests that it might be useful to consider the narrative as a novel. Regardless of the authenticity of the account of Equiano's nativity in the text, the narrative remains important as a widely-read and influential text; further, its critical reception offers insight as to how Equiano's contemporaries reacted to and understood an autobiographical account of enslavement.

Works Cited

Carretta, Vincent. Equiano, the African: Biography of a self-made man. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2007.

Carretta, Vincent. “Response to Paul Lovejoy's ‘Autobiography and Memory: Gustavus Vassa, Alias Olaudah Equiano, the African.’” Slavery & Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies 28, no. 1 (2007): 115-119.

Fisch, Audrey. The Cambridge Companion to the African American Slave Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Davidson, Cathy N. "Olaudah Equiano, Written by Himself." NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction 40, no. 1/2 (2006-2007): 18-51.

Kelleter, Frank. "Ethnic Self-Dramatization and Technologies of Travel" in The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004.

Little, Kenneth. Negroes in Britain: A Study of Racial Relations in English Society. London: Kegan Paul, 1947.

Samuels, Wilfred. "Disguised Voice in The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African." Black American Literature Forum 19, no. 2 (1985): 64-69.

Supplementary Bibliography

Aravamudan, Srinivas. “Equiano Lite.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 34, no. 4 (2001): 615-619.

Carey, Brycchan. "Olaudah Equiano: An Illustrated Biography." Brycchan Carey. Accessed June 15, 2016. http://www.brycchancarey.com/equiano/index.htm.

Chiles, Katy. Transformable Race: Surprising Metamorphoses in the Literature of Early America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Dillon, Elizabeth Maddock. “A Sea of Texts: The Atlantic World, Spatial Mapping, and Equiano’s Narrative.” In Religion, Space, and the Atlantic World, edited by John Corrigan, 22-54. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2017.

Lovejoy, Paul E. “Autobiography and Memory: Gustavus Vassa, alias Olaudah Equiano, the African.” Slavery and Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies 27, no. 3 (2006): 317-47.

Potkay, Adam. “History, Oratory, and God in Equiano's Interesting Narrative.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 34, no. 4 (2001): 601-614.

Sweet, James H. “Mistaken Identities? Olaudah Equiano, Domingos Álvares, and the Methodological Challenges of Studying the African Diaspora.” The American Historical Review 114, no. 2 (2009): 279-306.

How to cite this scholarly introduction:

Dodge-Harkins, Max. "The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African (1793): A Scholarly Introduction." The Early Caribbean Digital Archive. Boston: Northeastern University Digital Repository Service, 2016.