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Early American Studies—by the Book

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Phillip H. Round
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Extract

As a gift for his baptism in london, in february 1759, olaudah equiano records that he received a copy of Bishop Thomas Wilson's Essay towards an Instruction for the Indians (1740 [78]). The book's preface proclaimed the tract suitable for both “the Indians … a tractable People” and “[t]he very Hottentots, who are supposed to be the dullest of Mankind” (v, ix). At this point in his life story, Equiano has moved beyond the now famous “talking book” trope that marks the earlier sections of his autobiography to engage an emergent body of printed materials that were intended to speak to an interethnic cohort of potential Christian converts throughout the British Atlantic world.

Type
Theories and Methodologies
Information
PMLA , Volume 128 , Issue 4 , October 2013 , pp. 997 - 1003
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 by The Modern Language Association of America

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