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The Life and Adventures of Olaudah Equiano; or, Gustavus Vassa, the African. From an Account Written by Himself. Abridged by A. Mott. To which is added, Some Remarks on the Slave Trade (New York, 1829) is a rare example of a text prepared for African American school children. This abridgement of what was the best-known black narrative of the time (first published in 1789) was done by Abigail Field Mott, a New York Quaker, in league with Quaker antislavery activists in New York and Great Britain. Mott was one of the trustees of New York’s African Free School and in a brief preface notes she intended this work to be given as premiums to good students. The preface is dated 1825, but the pamphlet was printed in 1829. What happened in between is interesting. |
In 1826 Mott published her important compilation, Biographical Sketches and Interesting Anecdotes of Persons of Colour. To Which is Added, a Selection of Pieces in Poetry, printed in New York by the abolitionist printer Mahlon Day and also in York, England by the Quaker printer .W. Alexander. The New York printing was designed as a textbook for African Free School students, with each paragraph of every chapter numbered to facilitate reading assignments. Her book includes |
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an account of Equiano, abridged from his 1789 narrative, with quotation marks. In her pamphlet rendition, which she had to have been working on at about the same time, the text is slightly rewritten and the quotation marks removed. The book is of considerable importance, published in a dozen editions between 1826 and 1882. Our new pamphlet, I suspect, was done up not only as a text for students but also as an antislavery pamphlet for a larger readership. The work was printed by Samuel Wood, a longtime prolific Quaker-reformist publisher. Included with Equiano’s narrative are antislavery poems by William Cowper and Thomas Day; a reprint of Remarks on the Slave Trade, first published in London and Philadelphia in 1789 an featuring the famous illustration of the slave ship cross section; and Remarks on the Methods of Procuring Slaves, first published as an illustrated broadside in London in 1793 and reprinted by Wood as a broadside, Injured Humanity, in 1805 and again in at least three pamphlet editions as Mirror of Misery in 1807, 1811 and 1814.