“My chief pleasure has been books”: On Teaching Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho

In the Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho (1781–82), Sancho’s erudition, wit, pleasure in the arts, and love for his wife far outweigh extended considerations of systemic racism and personal struggle. This essay discusses two classroom experiences, one in the state of Maryland (US) and the other in the UK. What we have realized in our pedagogical approaches to teaching Sancho’s Letters is how immensely entrenched the association of Black subjectivity with historical suffering remains within academia. We propose some strategies developed in our own respective teaching to help students be more alert to the complex subjectivities Sancho inhabits, including foregrounding form and composition, exploring eighteenth-century inter-textuality, and moving away from the implicit promise that a literary survey course models anything like a comprehensive or totalizing account of the period.