7

This article will examine the letters of Ignatius Sancho, the first former slave to have his correspondence published in England by two white editors. These letters were written in the course of several years from the moment he established himself as a grocer in London in 1773, with the financial support of his master the Duke of Montagu, to the time he died in 1780. He greatly admired Laurence Sterne to whom he wrote for the first time in 1766 to ask him to write in favour of the abolition of slavery. Apart from this militant letter, Sancho rarely adopted a radical tone in his letters to prominent members of the society. But at times, when writing to a foreigner or someone residing outside of England or one of his black protégés, he expressed his views on the status of black people in Britain, as well as on the fate of his African brothers transported to the West Indies. The analysis of the letters evoking slavery will enable us to examine the uncomfortable position of this former black slave, whose commercial and epistolary connections within London’s fashionable society led him to evade any unpalatable topics which might impair his business and his integration in those social circles, for whom the question of slavery and slave trade was far remote from their everyday concerns.