B A U M A N R A R E B O O K S S U M M E R 2 0 2 3 "SPEAKS FOR MILLIONS OF OTHER AFRICANS WHOSE VOICES WERE SILENCED BY SLAVERY" OLAUDAH EQUIANO'S NARRATIVE, 1791 15. EQUIANO, Olaudah. The Interesting Narrative o the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself… Fourth Edition, Enlarged. Dublin: Printed For, and Sold By, The Author, 1791. Small octavo (4 by 6-3/4 inches), contemporary full brown calf rebacked with original red and navy morocco spine labels retained. $16,000 Rare expanded 1791 edition, issued two years after the virtually unobtainable "rst and second editions, of Equiano's cornerstone slave narrative that gave "millions of enslaved Africans and their descendants… a face, a name, and most important, a voice"—featuring his harrowing account of the Middle Passage. With subscribers' list, rarely found engraved frontispiece portrait of Equiano and engraved folding plate of a slave ship, in contemporary calf boards. Equiano is widely recognized as the founder of the African American slave narrative and a leader in the movement to end the slave trade. His Narrative stands alone as one of the "rarest historical documents, for millions of men, women and children who crossed the Atlantic during two or three centuries of the slave trade have left no word of their experiences" (Nichols, Many Thousand Gone, xi). "This was not just a book written against the slave trade; it was a book written by an African who had !rsthand memories of his childhood in West Africa" (Werner Sollars). With the initial publication of his self-published autobiography in 1789, "millions of enslaved Africans and their descendants were given a face, a name, and, most important, a voice" (Carretta, Equiano, 1). "Equiano's autobiography remains a classic text of an African's experiences in the era of Atlantic slavery. It is a book which operates on a number of levels: it is the diary of a soul, the story of an autodidact, and a personal attack on slavery and the slave trade. It is also the foundation-stone of the subsequent genre of black writing… the classic statement of African remembrance in the years of Atlantic slavery" (ODNB). This rare work is "so richly structured… from African freedom, through European enslavement, to African Freedom… that it became the prototype of the 19th-century slave narrative… It was Equiano whose text served to create a model that other ex-slaves would follow" (Gates, Jr., Signifying Monkey). This fourth edition is preceded only by the 1789 editions and the 1790 expanded third edition. "An unauthorized two-volume edition, based on the second London edition, was published in New York City in 1791. Contains !ve-page "List of Irish Subscriber" and seven-page "List of English Subscribers": the latter with names of abolitionists such as Thomas Clarkson, James Ramsay, writer Hannah More, Phillis Wheatley per association with the Countess of Huntington, and the name of "Susan Cullen": reportedly Susanna Cullen, the white English woman Equiano married three years later. Subscription lists such as these "also played a structural role in the Narrative [when] presented as a petition, one of the hundreds submitted to Parliament between 1789 and 1792" (Carretta, Introduction to Penguin edition, xvii-xxxi). ESTC N28777. Sabin 22714. Goldsmith's 14005. See Blockson 9568; Work, 458. Text quite fresh, contemporary calf boards with light expert restoration to extremities. 15
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