John Jea was an African preacher who travelled the world preaching Christianity and railing against those who used religion as a justification for slavery. Born in 1773 in the town of Old Calabar, in what is now Nigeria, Jea was kidnapped at the age of two along with his family and sold into slavery in New York. While enslaved, he converted to Christianity, and upon his manumission (or posible elopement) became an itinerant preacher, travelling to Boston, New Orleans, South America, and Europe. During the 1810s, Jea lived and preached in Liverpool, and later Portsea, England. It was here, between June 1815 and October 1816 he wrote and published his autobiography The Life, History and Unparalleled Sufferings of J. J. the African Preacher. Compiled and written by himself, and the hymnbook A Collection of Hymns. Compiled and Selected by John Jea, African Preacher of the Gospel. The memoir details his life as a slave, his conversion, and his life as a travelling minister. It is heavily religious in tone, but also displays Jea’s sensitivity to the material and political needs of his audience, thereby forming an important link between the slave narratives of the 18th century which focused on spiritual redemption, and those of the later 19th century which were more rhetorical and focused on the political cause of abolition. Jea’s religious poetry is scattered throughout The Life and his hymnbook, which contains 29 of his own composition.