Widely admired for its vivid accounts of the slave trade, Olaudah Equiano's autobiography -- the first slave narrative to attract a significant readership -- reveals many aspects of the eighteenth-century Western world through the experiences of one individual.

This is an account by a prominent African abolitionist, who was enslaved as a child in his village of Essaka, is what is now Southern Nigeria. After making it to England, he purchased his freedom and supported the British movement to end the slave trade.