![]() ![]() The events related in the book appear so far-fetched, however, that most of those who have read it, says Ekirch, "have tended to dismiss it as merely a sentimental fiction, written during an age when overblown stories of impossible adventures were a popular literary genre".īut then the historian happened across an obscure diary by an 18th-century Somerset rector that cited, as the event that had most marked the year 1743, a trial in which a young claimant who had returned unexpectedly from abroad sued his uncle for a lost inheritance. The principal source of information on Annesley was a fanciful if much-reprinted volume from 1743, Memoirs of an Unfortunate Young Nobleman ("Return'd," the title continues in classic 18th-century plot-spoiling style, "from Thirteen years Slavery in America, where he had been sent by a Wicked Contrivance of his Cruel Uncle A Story founded on Truth, and address'd equally to the Head and Heart"). That was certainly my take, for a long time."Įkirch and his fellows could be forgiven. "People were just not inclined to believe it. ![]() ![]() "I think one reason why there's been so little recent interest in the Annesley saga is that many modern historians and literary critics simply have not considered it to be true," says Roger Ekirch, an award-winning American historian whose impeccably researched yet rip-roaring rendering of Annesley's life, Birthright, is published this month. ![]()
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