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Historical person
c. 1745–1797
Equiano's 1789 autobiography states that he was born in the Igbo region of West Africa, kidnapped as a child and transported through the Atlantic slave system. He was given the name Gustavus Vassa, served several owners and purchased his freedom in 1766. He subsequently worked as a sailor, merchant and campaigner in Britain.
His published narrative described enslavement, maritime life, religion and the struggle for legal and personal freedom, and it supported the organised British abolition movement. In historical fiction he can provide a documented abolitionist perspective, although scholars continue to debate aspects of his birthplace using evidence that must be weighed against his own account.
In Julia Golding’s Cat Among the Pigeons, her investigation moves between Drury Lane, Bow Street and Britain's growing abolition movement, where Olaudah Equiano offers a documented example of resistance and self-emancipation.
Series
The Cat Royal series follows an orphan raised behind the scenes at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, from Georgian London into revolutionary Paris, the Atlantic world, Jamaica and industrial Scotland. Cat's work among actors, apprentices, aristocrats and street gangs repeatedly places her beside crimes and political conflicts that…
All books in this series
