ABSTRACT
The autobiography of James Albert, more commonly known as Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, inaugurates black British literature. Nothing is known about the author other than the details contained in the narrative whose very date of publication – 1772 – has only recently been ascertained by the American scholar Vincent Carretta. Even the term ‘author’ is inaccurate, for the book was dictated to and transcribed by Hannah More (1745-1833), a reforming poet, novelist and member of the Bluestocking Circle. The preface, written by Walter Shirley, a clergyman and cousin of the Countess of Huntingdon, offers scant biographical information other than his opinion that Gronniosaw who ‘appears to be turn’d of Sixty’ lived in Kidderminster and that profits from the memoir would serve ‘ALBERT; and his distressed Family’. The book’s dominant concerns are anticipated by Shirley’s promise that ‘this little History contains Matter well worthy the Notice and Attention of every Christian Reader.’
