Olaudah Equiano

Olaudah Equiano (c.1745-1797) was an eighteenth century African writer. He was born in what is now Nigeria, but as a child, he was taken as a slave to the New World and sold first to a captain in the Royal Navy, and later to a Quaker merchant. He bought his freedom by careful trading and saving and became a seaman, travelling widely over the world. In London, he became involved in the abolitionist movement, which led to him writing and publishing The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa the African (1789), a book that not only furthered the abolitionist cause, but also made Equiano's fortune.