An Authentic Narrative

If you know John Newton from the hymn “Amazing Grace,” this is the story behind it — told by Newton himself. An Authentic Narrative (1764) is his own account of his years as a profane sailor and slave-ship captain, the long turning that began in a violent 1748 storm, and his path to faith and ministry.

It is the primary source the later biographies retell — here in a clean, modern edition, with the original also linked free.

An Authentic Narrative is John Newton's spiritual autobiography, first published anonymously in 1764 as a series of letters addressed to the Reverend Thomas Haweis, who arranged for them to be printed. In it Newton recounts his early life: a sailor's son who lost his mother young, was pressed into the Royal Navy, deserted, and drifted into the Atlantic slave trade. He describes years of recklessness and unbelief, a period of near-enslavement himself in West Africa, and the violent storm at sea on March 10, 1748, that he marked ever after as the beginning of his return to faith.

The book's arc traces a long, uneven turning rather than a single instant. After the 1748 storm Newton began to pray and read scripture, but his outward circumstances and occupation changed only gradually. The Narrative follows him from the deck of a slave ship to a customs post at Liverpool, into years of self-education and lay ministry, and finally toward ordination in the Church of England. It is widely regarded as a classic of conversion literature, and it was the book that brought Newton to the attention of patrons who secured him a curacy at Olney.

Readers looking for an account of the man behind "Amazing Grace" will find its raw material here, told plainly and without flattering its author. Newton is candid about his profanity, his cruelty, and his stubbornness, presenting his own life as an example of mercy extended to an unlikely man.

John Newton (1725-1807) was an English sailor, slave-ship captain, Anglican clergyman, and hymn-writer, best known for composing the words to "Amazing Grace." He spent years in the Atlantic slave trade, including commanding slave ships, before leaving the sea after a stroke in 1754 and eventually being ordained in 1764. As curate of Olney he collaborated with the poet William Cowper on the Olney Hymns.

Newton dated the start of his conversion to a near-fatal storm in March 1748, when he cried out to God as his ship took on water. It is important to be accurate about what followed: his change was gradual, not immediate. He continued working in the slave trade for several years after 1748, making further voyages, and at the time of writing the Narrative he did not yet treat his role in that trade as among his great sins. Only decades later did he turn publicly against it, publishing the abolitionist pamphlet Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade in 1788 and supporting William Wilberforce's campaign to end the trade.