Ignatius Sancho (1729-1780) composed and published music, voted in a general election, and wrote influential popular letters. He was also born on a slave ship, orphaned after his mother died in childbirth and his father committed suicide, and taken to England to work as a domestic servant. Educated and supported by a wealthy patron, he developed keen literary tastes that, along with moral advice, praise for friendship, and delight in domestic life, appear throughout his letters. Those he wrote to the novelist Laurence Sterne about the evils of slavery were published during the 1770s in British newspapers as part of the movement to abolish the slave trade. The posthumous publication of his Letters in 1782 arguably made him the first Black British writer.

At a time when it was uncommon if not illegal for enslaved Africans to learn to read in the American colonies, he was an active participant in London’s literary culture, writing that “my chief pleasure has been books.” This exhibition tells the stories of his life and times through the same books he enjoyed—novels, poetry, plays, history, and sermons—and the periodicals where his letters first appeared in print. It features original and rare items, including a first edition of his Letters, that emphasize the roles he played in the literature, music, and politics of the late eighteenth century.