An exposition of the life and career of a slave boy who rose to become the first black Anglican bishop. Bishop Crowther was a committed patriot who argued than an indigenous econmoy must underscore African evangelisation. He also made significant contributions to the study of the Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa and Ijo languages; translated the bible into Yoruba; and travelled up the Niger in 1841, writing extensively about the peoples and cultures of the Niger and Benue valleys. The author, Ade-Ajayi, is one of Africa's leading historians, and Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Ibadan. His book is not intended to be a definitive biography of Crowther, but nevertheless, embodies the author's thinking about this figure, and several decades research. It brings together lectures and seminar papers, and the author's earlier edition of Crowther's own story, and so probably remains the most important study of the bishop to-date.