Unchained Voices: An Anthology of Black Authors in the English-Speaking World of the Eighteenth Century

Carretta has assembled the most comprehensive anthology ever published of writings by 18th-century people of African descent, enabling many of these authors to be read for the first time in two centuries. Contributors include Briton Hamilton, James Albert, Ukawsaw Cronnopsaw, John Marrant, Venture Smith, Francis Williams, David George, and Boston King. Photos.

Many of us know of the poet Phillis Wheatley, the first black woman to publish a book in the Americas, but many of her contemporaries in America and in England remain obscure. This anthology, compiled by Vincent Carretta, a professor of English at the University of Maryland, goes a long way toward rectifying that omission. Here, Carretta collects the work of nearly 20 black writers from the late 1700s. Some, like Ignatius Sancho, a black Londoner who corresponded with important figures of his day such as the author Laurence Sterne, and Olaudah Equiano, an early black abolitionist who created the slave narrative, are well known. Others, like the poet Francis Williams, or Johnson Green, who served in the Revolutionary Army, and whose confession before his execution in 1786 for burglary is included here, are less so. This is an important collection but, while Carretta provides an introduction and footnotes, one wishes he had provided brief biographies for each of the contributors.