Ignatius Sancho : An African Man of Letters

This volume looks both at Ignatius Sancho's accomplishment and the context in which they were achieved.

Including themes, such as Sancho's frienship with Laurence Sterne and the effect this had on his writing, the influence of his patron the Duke of Montagu and Sancho's position amongst the black musicians of his day, the text also encompasses wider issues, such as abolitionism and the slave trade.

With Gainsborough's portrait of Sancho illustrated, art-historical themes are also addressed in the book's introductory essay.

One of England's first African prose writers, Ignatius Sancho, started life on a slave-ship in the mid-Atlantic.

But the time of his death in 1780, he had established his own grocery shop in Westminster.

More remarkably, he had become a respected figure in contemporary literary and musical circles, writing a "Theory of Music" for the Princess Royal and corresponding with Laurence Sterne.

In addition, two years after his death, his "Letters" were published and were very popular. Sancho, one of 20,000 blacks in England in the 18th century, transcended the inhumanities of the Atlantic slave trade, and the prejudice and ambiguity of his social status in England, recognizing that his was a privileged life in comparison to the "miserable fate of almost all of our unfortunate colour".