"ONE OF THE EARLIEST BLACK CRITICS OF THE INSTITUTION OF SLAVERY": EXCEEDINGLY RARE AND IMPORTANT FIRST EDITION OF THE LETTERS OF IGNATIUS SANCHO, 1782, A CLASSIC WORK IN THE HISTORY OF SLAVERY, FEATURING THE ELEGANT FRONTISPIECE OF SANCHO AFTER THE FAMED GAINSBOROUGH PORTRAIT

SANCHO, Ignatius. Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, An African. In Two Volumes. To which are prefixed, Memoirs of his Life. London: J. Nichols, 1782. Two volumes. Octavo, period-style full tree calf gilt, red and green morocco spine labels, marbled endpapers.

First edition of the landmark Letters of Ignatius Sancho, born on a ship from Africa in the Middle Passage who rose to become renowned in British society, issued posthumously following his death in 1780, featuring his views of slavery—"especially noteworthy because they were made before sustained opposition to the African slave trade began"—including his famous letter to Laurence Sterne and his letter praising Phillis Wheatley, with engraved frontispiece plates in each volume including his striking portrait after a painting by Gainsborough.

"Born to enslaved African parents on a ship in the Middle Passage bearing its human cargo from Africa to the Americas and then brought to England, Ignatius Sancho… [was] one of the earliest black critics of the institution of slavery" (Carretta and Gould, eds. Genius in Bondage, 1-2). Despite his birth and his youth as a servant, he was able to educate himself and become a successful merchant. "Sancho's renown first became extensive during the 1760s," when he began corresponding with Laurence Stern, was painted by Gainsborough, and began to author works on poetry and music (Ellis, Politics of Sensibility, 58). Artists regularly consulted Sancho about their paintings, and aspiring authors sought him out, for he was "said to be a great judge of literary performances" (ODNB). "After Sancho died in 1780, his letters were collected and an edition made of them by Frances Crew. Published in 1782, the first edition had over 1160 subscribers… the book was accompanied by an etching of the Gainsborough portrait of Sancho, engraved by Bartolozzi," along with a biography written by Joseph Jekyll, which contained inaccuracies such as the mis-dating of Sancho's famous letter to Sterne as "July, 1776," even though Sterne died in 1768.

"In one lifetime Sancho had gone from slavery to servitude, and then on to become… renowned for his extensive acquaintance with the celebrated and wealthy" (Ellis, Politics, 59). This was at a time when "slavery and the slave trade were intimately bound up with British culture and society at every level," and slave labor "in the American colonies, was the most profitable enterprise known to British commerce" (Carey and Salih in Discourses of Slavery, 1). To some, Sancho represents "the most complete assimilation of an African writer into British culture in the period" (Ellis, Politics, 59). Yet "rather than being an example of assimilation," scholars increasingly find that "the form and substance of Sancho's Letters repeatedly declare a culturally combative exceptionalism that makes his book both transgressive and radical" (Ellis in Genius in Bondage, 212).

"Vincent Carretta argues that Sancho's comments on slavery 'are as direct as almost any made during the century by black and white writers and are especially noteworthy because they were made before sustained opposition to the African slave trade began… In Sancho's most famous letter, written to Laurence Sterne [I:95-8], he tells the novelist that 'I am one of those people whom the vulgar and illiberal call 'Negurs', an insult which had clearly been leveled at him. The letter… is an explicit call for 'humanity' in the slave trade… By asking Stern to publicize the condition of 'my brother moors,' Sancho publicly aligned himself with those who opposed slavery, and makes a conscious anti-slavery statement as significant as any made by more celebrated members of the abolition movement" (Carey in Discourses, 84-6).

Sancho's Letters "offers many personal and political arguments against slavery, and shows evidence of having been constructed with those in mind" (Carey, 63). In a 1778 letter to Jabez Fisher (I:174-76), Sancho thanks him for sending books "upon the unchristian and most diabolical usage of my brother negroes," discusses the "horrid wickedness of the traffic" and praises the African-born poet Phillis Wheatley as a "Genius in bondage." "Like Wheatley, Sancho ascended to the ranks of literary fame. Both quickly came to be used by pro- and antislavery polemicists arguing alternatively for the inferiority or equality of peoples of Africa and their descendants" (Sidbury, Becoming African, 23). Jefferson, who had a 1784 edition in his library, was among those who "felt the need to dismiss Sancho's achievements as an aberration, arguing that, while Sancho's writing compares favorably with writing by other Africans, 'when we compare him with the writers of the race among whom he lived… we are compelled to enrol him [sic] at the bottom of the column. Jefferson also hinted that the Letters might be forgery. Clearly such a strong attack on Sancho would not have been necessary had many others not been making the opposite case. It is thus plain to see that the Letters was an important, if posthumous, component of the discourse of slavery and abolition" (Carey, 85-6). Significantly, when "England and its North American colonies stumbled toward war, Sancho and Wheatley wrote themselves into the public eye as 'African' authors'"—employing the stance of the "African" or "Ethiopian" or "Moor," which implied "an outsider with judgment unsullied by self-interest or prejudice" (Sidbury, 25- 29).

"By the second half of the 1780s, Sancho's Letters was cited by the abolitionist movement as an outstanding refutation of the idea that black people lacked souls, intellects or rational faculties. Over the next couple decades Sancho was profiled and his correspondence reprinted in various anthologies… compiled by English, French and American abolitionists" (King, Ignatius Sancho, 67). With engraved frontispiece portrait (I); engraved frontispiece view (II) beneath printed, "London, Publish'd 4th Jany 1782 by J. Nichols Red Lion Passage Fleet Street." With list of subscribers (I). Vol. I as issued with unnumbered "*C4" between C3 & C4. ESTC T100345. Sabin 76310. See Blockson 263 (3rd ed.), 264 (5th ed.). See Sowerby 4640 (1784 ed.).

Interior fresh with mere trace of foxing. An exceptional near-fine copy of a pivotal work in English and American history, highly desirable and beautiful bound.