SCU Archives & Special Collections has recently added several works to support the teaching of 18th century Black authors, including texts by or about Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784), Olaudah Equiano (1745-1797) and Ignatius Sancho (1729-1780). A distinctive feature of these 18th century publications is the repeated inclusion of testimonials that insist upon the authenticity of the writer’s voices and their authority over their own writing–features that function as defenses against racist conceptions of Black people and as arguments for the abolition of slavery. 

Phillis Wheatley was captured as a child in West Africa, brought to Boston and enslaved by prominent businessman John Wheatley. She became one of the most celebrated poets in America after the publication of her collection Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, in 1773. A&SC has acquired three texts by or about Wheatley to facilitate the study of her poetry and its historical context. The earliest is the first published defense of her work, “Some Account of Phillis, a learned Negro Girl,” which appears in The Gentleman’s Magazine in 1773 (the same year as her collected poems). When discussing her book, the defense notes that “the profits of this publication will, in the first place, be applied toward purchasing her freedom.” Next, we have a 1775 imprint of Wheatley’s poem “Recollection” in the Annual Register of 1772, which introduced Wheatley’s poetry more broadly to British readers, and also contains a short defense. Lastly, we also have acquired a copy of Phillis Wheatley’s Memoir and poems of Phillis Wheatley, a native African and a slave: dedicated to the friends of the Africans, printed in 1835, which contains her poems and a short memoir with notes from George Washington.

Examples of letters, attestations and subscribers from the front matter of Olaudah Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, The African. Norwich: Printed for, and sold by the author, 1794.

In addition to these works of Phillis Wheatley, A&SC has acquired the autobiographies of two prominent Black 18th century abolitionists, Olaudah Equiano (1745-1797) and Ignatius Sancho (1729-1780). Born in the Kingdom of Benin (now Nigeria), Olaudah Equiano was kidnapped, sold into slavery and shipped across the Middle Passage as a 10 year old child. He worked as a slave for an officer in the British Navy. He bought his freedom after ten years, after which he traveled the world. He later settled in England and became involved in abolition. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, The African, was one of the earliest published works by an African writer and earliest first-person accounts of the harrowing Middle Passage–which refers to the journey that slave ships took to transport enslaved Africans to the Americas. The autobiography went through eight editions in his lifetime and was a major influence in the passage of the 1807 British Slave Act, which abolished the slave trade in the United Kingdom. Ignatius Sancho was born on a slave ship as it crossed the Atlantic Ocean to the East Indies, and later taken to Greenwich, England. As a young man, he escaped slavery, becoming a shopkeeper and ardent abolitionist. He was the first known Black British person to have voted in parliamentary elections. Letters of the late Ignatius Sancho, an African, one of the earliest accounts of African slavery, were published posthumously. A&SC’s copy is from the first Irish edition, owned by Mary Archdall (née Dawson), the wife of an M.P. in the Irish parliament.

Frontispiece. Letters of the late Ignatius Sancho, an African. To which is prefixed, memoirs of his life, by Ignatius Sancho. 3rd Edition. Printed by Brett Smith for Richard Moncrieffe, 1784.

These new acquisitions have already been featured in an A&SC class for Dr. Kirstyn Leuner’s Black Romanticism course in the English Department (ENGL 147) in Spring 2022 and Spring 2023. The department is planning to send the Wheatley and Equiano texts for conservation treatments in 2024 (paper cleaning and repair, as well as stabilizing the bindings), which will safeguard them for continued use in the future. We’re also looking forward to featuring the Wheatley texts in a display for an event on Oct. 25, 2023 sponsored by the Ignatian Center’s Bannan Forum, the Center for the Arts & Humanities, and Premodern Studies to bring Dr. Wendy Roberts to campus talk about her recent discovery of a previously unattributed Phillis Wheatley poem.