author
James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw
Known as one of the earliest published African writers in Britain, his life story is both a survival narrative and a spiritual autobiography. His 1772 book opened a rare first-person window onto enslavement, faith, travel, and Black life in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world.
1 Audiobook
A Narrative of the Most Remarkable Particulars in the Life of James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, an African Prince, as Related by Himself
by James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw
About the author
Born in the kingdom of Borno in what is now northeastern Nigeria, James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw was captured as a young man and sold into slavery. He was taken across the Atlantic, later gained his freedom, and eventually made his way through military and maritime service before settling in Britain.
He is best remembered for A Narrative of the Most Remarkable Particulars in the Life of James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, published in Bath in 1772. The book is widely regarded as the first published autobiography by an African in Britain, and one of the earliest slave narratives in English. Told in a direct, personal voice, it combines the story of enslavement and displacement with an intense account of religious searching and Christian faith.
Much of what is known about his life comes from that narrative itself, so some biographical details are uncertain. Even so, his work remains important for the history of Black writing, autobiography, and abolition-era literature, because it preserves an early firsthand account of a life shaped by coercion, movement, and resilience.