Self-Publication; Self-Promotion; and the Life of William Grimes, the Runaway Slave

Abstract

Self-publication-that is, the funding of a book’s publication by its author-has a long and influential history in African American autobiography, a history that has only occasionally been discussed or even considered. Like so much of African American literature, we can trace that history back to the Afro-Briton Olaudah Equiano, whose Narrative (1789), Vincent Carretta argues, established Equiano as “one of the earliest self-publishing entrepreneurs” (“Property” 144). Even if we ignore Carretta’s provocative claim that Equiano was a mythmaker who fabricated the place of his nativity and much of his life story, we cannot ignore the fact that Equiano was-from the first-focused on selling that life story to audiences around the world (Equiano).