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Although the book called the Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, An African has mostly been considered a historical document since its first posthumous publication in 1782, the text is also a literary production.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 share some affinity with other high-cultural African writing in English of the period, such...