This autobiography, which is one of the very few slave narratives to offer a first-hand description of life in Africa as well as of capture, enslavement, and experiences during the Middle Passage to the New World, can be read on multiple levels. It also tells readers how as a free man he worked on merchant and military ships, served in the Seven Years War, and traveled to the Arctic, as well as how he became a leading figure in the British antislavery movement. First published in 1772, the volume recounts Equiano's kidnapping in Africa at the age of 10 or 11, and how he was subsequently shipped to the West Indies, sent to a Virginia plantation, purchased by an officer in the British navy, and toiled on a merchant ship for a decade until he was able to buy his freedom. One of the very first slave narratives, The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano (1745-1797), served as a prototype for the well-known slave autobiographies of the 19th century written by such fugitive slaves as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs.
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