A biography of Olaudah Equiano (1745-1797), known as Gustavus Vassa for much of his life. Enslaved at the age of about eleven, Equiano learned to read and write and converted to Christianity, eventually buying his freedom in 1766. Thereafter, much of his life was spent in London and at sea on British ships. He was an early campaigner against the slave trade, was employed by the British Government as an agent in their efforts to ship the black poor from London to Sierra Leone and was a leading member of the Sons of Africa, a campaigning group of educated black Londoners. Frequently called on as a spokesman for the black community, Equiano became a public figure in his own lifetime, publishing his autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, in 1789 which became one of the first examples of published writing by an African writer to be widely read.