Sancho, Ignatius | Markman Ellis (essay date 1996)
Markman Ellis (essay date 1996)
SOURCE: Ellis, Markman. “Sancho's Letters and the Sentimental Novel.” In The Politics of Sensibility: Race, Gender and Commerce in the Sentimental Novel, pp. 79-86. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
[In the following essay, Ellis offers a reading of Sancho in the context of the sentimental novel and his correspondence with the novelist Laurence Sterne.]
Although the book called the Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, An African has mostly been considered a historical document since its first posthumous publication in 1782, the text is also a literary production. In this way the letters mentioned in the title refer not so much to a collection of correspondence as an exhibition of Sancho's learning and sentiments. Written in the self-conscious and refined mode of sentimentalism, Sancho's Letters are distinctly unlike other African writings of the period. Although they...
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