Olaudah Equiano - The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano

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OLAUDAH EQUIANO

With an Introduction by

MICHAEL TAYLOR

This edition first published 2021

Introduction copyright © 2021 Michael Taylor

The material for the Interesting Narrative is drawn from the first edition, published in London in 1789, and in the public domain.

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ISBN 9780857089137 (hardback)

ISBN 9780857089151 (ePDF)

ISBN 9780857089144 (epub)

By Michael Taylor

In the opening paragraph of his 1789 memoir, the black British abolitionist Olaudah Equiano presents himself as an everyman. ‘I offer here the history of neither a saint, a hero, nor a tyrant’, he tells his readers. ‘I believe there are few events in my life which have not happened to many.’

This is entirely wrong. From his earliest years in ‘a charming fruitful vale’ in what is now Nigeria to his retirement as a gentleman, Equiano lived a life of uncommon drama. His story is reminiscent of the eighteenth century's most imaginative picaresque adventures. If The Interesting Narrative were fiction, it might sit alongside Fielding's Tom Jones or Smollett's Roderick Random as an archetype of the genre – and so it was prescient that Equiano's parents named him ‘Olaudah’ (pronounced Oh-lah-oo-dah), which means ‘vicissitudes or fortunate’.