Oliver Ayers – författare

'In short, I write just what I think.'After a successful career in the service of an aristocratic family, Charles Ignatius Sancho (c. 1729–1780) established a successful grocery business in Westminster and had eight children, four of whom survived to adulthood. Charming, playful, and thoughtful, Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African provides an unequalled portrait of the everyday life of a Black family in eighteenth-century London. The collection of 161 letters reveals Sancho as a "man of letters," a committed Christian, and a politically-engaged citizen—one of the first Black Britons to cast a vote in a general election. Published posthumously in 1782, the volume met with immediate success. His letters, admired for their distinctive epistolary style, were reproduced as model examples of how to write with feeling, wit, and sincerity. Sancho also developed important commentary on European discourses of race and slavery, topics to which the correspondence repeatedly returns. His writing—both the fact of its existence and its cultural sophistication— was important evidence for the abolition campaigns which emerged after his death.Newly edited from the first edition of the Letters, Nicole N. Aljoe, Markman Ellis, and Oliver Ayers provide new information about Sancho and his family in an introduction and detailed notes. Appendices present biographical notes on his principal correspondents and a summary of the contemporary response.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Historians have long realized the US civil rights movement pre-dated Martin Luther King Jr., but they disagree on where, when and why it started. Laboured Protest offers new answers in a study of black political protest during the New Deal and Second World War. It finds a diverse movement where activists from the left operated alongside, and often in competition with, others who signed up to liberal or nationalist political platforms. Protestors in this period often struggled to challenge the different types of discrimination facing black workers, but their energetic campaigning was part of a more complex, and ultimately more interesting, movement than previously thought.

William Sancho was the son of Ignatius Sancho, one of the eighteenth century's most important Black Britons. In contrast to his father, however, William's life has never been fully explored. This Element builds a new evidential trail to uncover a multifaceted career that saw the younger Sancho undertake an apprenticeship and become a bookseller, rate-paying citizen and well-connected man about town. Sancho also contributed to the early vaccination movement and the campaign against slavery. Remarkable as elements of it were, Sancho's story makes sound historical sense for someone so deeply embedded within the country's burgeoning entrepreneurial, literate, male-dominated, metropolitan and imperially-focused public sphere. Sancho was a Black man who lived a distinctly 'British' life: his importance stands on its own terms, but also alters our perspectives of what these two historical labels have traditionally implied, and the experiences that were possible as part of them.

William Sancho was the son of Ignatius Sancho, one of the eighteenth century's most important Black Britons. In contrast to his father, however, William's life has never been fully explored. This Element builds a new evidential trail to uncover a multifaceted career that saw the younger Sancho undertake an apprenticeship and become a bookseller, rate-paying citizen and well-connected man about town. Sancho also contributed to the early vaccination movement and the campaign against slavery. Remarkable as elements of it were, Sancho's story makes sound historical sense for someone so deeply embedded within the country's burgeoning entrepreneurial, literate, male-dominated, metropolitan and imperially-focused public sphere. Sancho was a Black man who lived a distinctly 'British' life: his importance stands on its own terms, but also alters our perspectives of what these two historical labels have traditionally implied, and the experiences that were possible as part of them.