Olaudah Equiano

Olaudah Equiano (c. 1745 – 31 March 1797), known for most of his life as Gustavus Vassa was a writer from the Igbo region of the Kingdom of Benin (known today as southern Nigeria). Enslaved as a child in Africa, he was taken to the Caribbean and sold as a slave to a Royal Navy officer. He was sold twice more but purchased his own freedom in 1766. As a freedman in London, Equiano supported the British abolitionist movement and was active among leaders of the anti-slave trade movement in the 1780s. He published his autobiography in 1789, which depicted the horrors of slavery. It went through nine editions in his lifetime and helped gain passage of the British Slave Trade Act 1807, which abolished the slave trade. Equiano was married to an English woman, Susannah Cullen, in 1792 and together they had two daughters. He died in 1797 in Westminster.

Main Writing Genre

African Biographies & Memoirs

Main Writing Language

Black English

Region

Afro-European