Life of Olaudah Equiano, Gustavus Vassa the African

'The Life of Olaudah Equiano' is one of the earliest-known examples of published writing by an African writer and the first influential slave narrative of what became a large literary genre. Equiano's autobiography helped in the creation of the Slave Trade Act 1807 which ended the African slave trade for Britain and its colonies. Olaudah Equiano (c. 1745 1797), known in his lifetime as Gustavus Vassa was a freed slave of Igbo extraction from the eastern part of present-day Nigeria, who supported the British movement to end the slave trade.