Quobna Ottobah Cugoano was born in present-day Ghana. Kidnapped at the age of thirteen and sold into slavery by his fellow Africans in 1770, he worked in the brutal plantation chain gangs of the West Indies before being freed in England.Vincent Carretta is professor of English at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the editor of the Penguin Classics editions of the Complete Writings of Phillis Wheatley, Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African, and Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery by Ottobah Cugoano.
