Sancho, Ignatius. Letters Of The Late Ignatius Sancho, An African. In Two Volumes. To which is prefixed, Memoirs of His Life. The Third Edition. Two Volumes Bound in One. Dublin, Printed by Brett Smith, For Richard Moncrieffe, No. 16, Capel-Street, 1784. c. 16.5 x 8.5 cm. (1) [Blank], Title Page, xiii [Advertisement & The Life of Ignatius Sancho], 310 pages. [Volume 2 starts at Page 147], (1) [Blank]. [A12 – O6]. The book is missing the engraved frontispiece showing the Author. Full calf with red morocco spine label (‘Sancho’s Letters’). Few gilt decorations on spine / spine label. Very good condition. Some shelf wear, rubbing and bumping. Edges and end papers dust dulled. Armorial Ex Libris of previous owner (‘William & Caroline Acton’) on front paste down with small numbers written on Ex Libris itself and on front free end paper (see images). Name of previous owner on Title Page. Second name appears to be scratched off. Occasional mild foxing, otherwise internally bright and clean.

Charles Ignatius Sancho (c. 1729 – 14 December 1780) was a British abolitionist, writer, and composer. Charles Ignatius Sancho was born on a slave ship crossing the Atlantic Ocean, in what was known as the Middle Passage. His mother died not long after arriving in the Spanish colony of New Granada, which formed parts of modern-day Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and Venezuela. He was baptised and named by the Catholic bishop of the colony. His father reportedly took his own life rather than live as a slave.
Sancho’s owner took the young orphan, barely two years old, to England and gave him to three unmarried sisters living together in Greenwich, where he lived from 1731 to 1749. The sisters gave him the surname Sancho as they believed he resembled Don Quixote’s squire. The Duke of Montagu, a frequent visitor to the sisters, became impressed by Sancho’s intellect, frankness, and amiability. The Duke not only encouraged Sancho to read, but also lent him books from his personal library at Blackheath.
Sancho’s informal education made his lack of freedom at Greenwich unbearable, and he ran away to Montagu House, Blackheath in 1749. For two years until her death in 1751, Sancho worked as a butler for the Duchess of Montagu at her residence, where he immersed himself in music, poetry, reading, and writing. Upon her death in 1751, Sancho received an annuity of £30 (equivalent to £5,000 in 2021) and a year’s salary. On 17 December 1758 he married a West Indian woman, Anne Osborne, becoming a devoted husband and father. They had seven children: Frances Joanna, Ann Alice, Elizabeth Bruce, Jonathan William, Lydia, Katherine Margaret, and William Leach Osborne. Around the time of the birth of their third child, Sancho became a valet to George Montagu, the son-in-law of his previous patron. Sancho remained a valet until 1773.
In 1768, British artist Thomas Gainsborough painted a portrait of Sancho at the same time as the Duchess of Montagu sat for her portrait by Gainsborough as well. By the late 1760s, Sancho had already become well accomplished and was considered by many to be a man of refinement. In 1766, at the height of the debate about slavery, Sancho wrote to Anglo-Irish novelist Laurence Sterne, encouraging the famous writer to lobby for the abolition of the slave trade.
Sancho quickly became involved in the nascent British abolitionist movement, which sought to outlaw both the slave trade and the institution of slavery itself, and he became one of its most devoted supporters. Sancho’s status as a male property-owner meant he was legally qualified to vote in a general election, a right he exercised in 1774 and 1780, becoming the first known British African to have voted in Britain. Gaining fame in Britain as “the extraordinary Negro”, Sancho became, to British abolitionists, a symbol of the humanity of Africans and the immorality of the slave trade and slavery. Sancho died in 1780, with his The Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African, edited and published two years after his death, being the first published letter collection by a writer of African descent.
In 1774 with help from Montagu, Sancho, suffering from ill health with gout, opened a grocery shop, offering merchandise such as tobacco, sugar, and tea, at 19 Charles Street in London’s Mayfair, Westminster. These were goods then mostly produced by slaves in the West Indies.
As a shopkeeper Sancho enjoyed more time to socialise, correspond with his many friends, share his enjoyment of literature, and his shop had many visitors. He wrote and published a Theory of Music, though no copy is extant today. There are 62 known compositions by Sancho, which were printed in four collections in London between c. 1767 and 1779: Minuets Cotillons & Country Dances, book I (c. 1767), containing 24 dances; A Collection of New Songs (c. 1769), six songs on words of William Shakespeare, David Garrick, Anacreon, and unidentified authors; Minuets, &c., &c., book II (c. 1770), with 20 dances; and Twelve Country Dances for the Year 1779. In addition, he wrote two plays. At this time, he also wrote letters and in newspapers, under his own name and under the pseudonym “Africanus”.
Sancho received many prominent visitors at his shop, including statesman and abolitionist Charles James Fox, who successfully steered a resolution through Parliament pledging it to abolish the slave trade. He oversaw a Foreign Slave Trade Bill in spring 1806 that prohibited British subjects from participating in the trading of slaves with the colonies of Britain’s wartime enemies, thus eliminating two-thirds of the slave trade passing through British ports.
As a male property owner, and regardless of his ethnicity, he had the right to vote for Members of Parliament. He was the first person of African origin known to have voted in Britain.
Ignatius Sancho died from the effects of gout on 14 December 1780 and was buried in the churchyard of St Margaret’s, Westminster. He was also the first person of African descent known to be given an obituary in the British press.
While his correspondence often included domestic issues, it also commented on the political and literary life in 18th-century Britain. One of his more famous series of letters includes his eye-witness accounts of the Gordon Riots in June 1780. The angry mob passed outside his shop on Charles Street. Beginning as a Protestant protest against parliamentary extension of Roman Catholic enfranchisement it grew into a violent mob of 100,000 looting and burning parts of London.
In 1782 Frances Crewe, a correspondent of Sancho, arranged for 160 of his letters to be published in the form of two volumes entitled The Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African. The book sold very well, with more than 2,000 subscribing to it. His widow received in royalties more than £500, equivalent to £66,567 in 2021. Joseph Jekyll provided a memoir of Sancho for the first edition, and four more editions had been issued by 1803.
Sancho’s son, William Leach Osborne Sancho, inherited the shop on Charles Street, Mayfair, and transformed it into a printing and book-selling business. In 1803 at this shop, he printed a fifth edition of Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho with Memoirs of His Life by Joseph Jekyll, with a frontispiece engraving by Bartolozzi.
Sancho was commemorated on a 2007 postage stamp issued by the Royal Mail in recognition of his work as an abolitionist. He also features on the list of “100 Great Black Britons”. On 1 October 2020, Google commemorated British Black History Month by honouring Sancho with a Doodle. (Wikipaedia)
This book of Ignatius Sancho’s wise, warm, and witty letters was the first published correspondence by a writer of African descent. It was first printed in 1782, two years after Sancho’s death, and it became a powerful tool in the campaign to end slavery. Early editions are now very scarce.

• Keywords: Africa · Biography & Literary Criticism · Classical & Old Literature · Great Britain · History · History & Culture · Literature · Politics · Social Sciences
• Language: English
• Inventory Number: 103695AB

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