Selected Bibliography:
Olaudah Equiano
(1745-1797)

By Brycchan Carey,
Kingston University

Last revised 3 July 2002

Bibliographies

Editions

• The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself, 2 vols (London, 1789). The first edition is notable for a number of reasons, including that it is the first work we know of to have been both written and published by an African in England.
• The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself, 2 vols (New York, 1791). The first (unauthorised) American edition.
• The Life of Olaudah Equiano, or, Gustavus Vassa the African, reprinted with a new introduction by Paul Edwards, Colonial History Series (London: Dawson, 1969). A facsimile of the 1789 first edition with an important introduction by Paul Edwards. This one of the first texts of the Equiano renaissance.
• The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings, ed. Vincent Carretta (London and New York: Penguin, 1995). Reprints the ninth edition (London, 1794) along with a number of Equiano's letters and newspaper articles. Scholarly, with a wealth of detailed notes, this is now the standard edition. A new edition with further critical and historical material, is promised for 2002.
• The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself, ed. Werner Sollors (New York: Norton Critical Editions, 2001). An edition aimed at students. Its debt to Carretta is clear, but it does include a wide range of related material and background information of interest to those new to Equiano.

Biographies

• The Interesting Narrative. Equiano's autobiography is the primary source for biography.
• James Walvin, An African's Life: The Life and Times of Olaudah Equiano, 1745-1797 (Washington: Cassell, 1998). This biography retells Equiano's story. In large part it is a paraphrase of The Interesting Narrative with some additional material. Engagingly written, but no substitute for a scholarly edition of The Narrative itself.
• Vincent Carretta, "Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa? New Light on an Eighteenth-Century Question of Identity," Slavery and Abolition 20, no. 3 (December 1999). Important new evidence about Equiano's identity and early life history.

Criticism

• Vincent Carretta, "Three West Indian Writers of the 1780s Revisited and Revised," Research in African Literature 29, no. 4 (Winter 1998): 73-86. Useful round-up of recent scholarship.
• Angelo Costanzo, Surprizing Narrative: Olaudah Equiano and the Beginnings of Black Autobiography (New York: Greenwood Press, 1987). An influential look at Equiano's role in the development of early black autobiography.
• Charles T. Davis and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., The Slave's Narrative (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1985). Frequently quoted, and a fresh approach when it first appeared, this is now starting to show its age.
• Paul Edwards, Unreconciled Strivings and Ironic Strategies: Three Afro-British Authors of the Georgian Era: Ignatius Sancho, Olaudah Equiano, Robert Wedderburn (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press, 1992). A short pamphlet taking issue with Keith Sandiford and others. Difficult to find, it is nonetheless important for being an historicist counterblast to literary approaches to Equiano.
• Peter Fryer, Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain (London: Pluto Press, 1984). Still the best general history of the British black presence to date, although sometimes too uncritical of the historical and literary sources. Equiano is discussed at pp. 102-112, and in passing throughout much of the book.
• Adam Potkay, "Olaudah Equiano and the Art of Spiritual Autobiography," Eighteenth-Century Studies 27 (1994). Considers an aspect of Equiano's writing frequently overlooked by scholars.
• Keith Sandiford, Measuring the Moment: Strategies of Protest in Eighteenth-century Afro-English Writing (London: Associated Univ. Presses, 1988). An important work which introduces the notion of the "ironic strategy" by which eighteenth-century Black British writers registered their protest against slavery while ostensibly remaining within a mainstream discourse.
• Helena Woodard, African British Writings in the Eighteenth Century: The Politics of Race and Reason (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1999). Contains a fruitfully intertextual chapter, "Dampier's Hottentots, Swift's Yahoos, and Equiano's Ibos: Imaging Blackness in a Colonialist Discourse."

Electronic Resources

• Brycchan Carey, Olaudah Equiano, or, Gustavus Vassa, the African. A well-developed website which includes biography, a more detailed bibliography, extracts from The Interesting Narrative, maps, portraits, and other images, and links to resources on the Web.

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