William Wells Brown

Offers a fictionalized narrative of the life of a girl rumored to be the illegitimate mulatto daughter of Thomas Jefferson, describing her escape attempts and encounters as she circulates through the American slave trade.

President's Daughter

Clotel

William Craft

Daphne A. Brooks

Henry Box Brown

Jeffrey Gonda

"The four former slaves represented here met only once. Yet each attained legendary stature in the anti-slavery battle--and justly so, for their escapes are among the most dramatic ever recorded"--P. [4] of cover.

Four Slave Narratives

The Great Escapes

Frederick Douglass

Harriet E. Wilson

The Heroic Slave; Clotel; Our Nig

Three Classic African-American Novels

An influential force in the abolition movement and a lasting testimonial to the injustice of slavery, Brown's Narrative was an instant bestseller upon its 1847 publication and remains essential reading. It offers a sincere and moving account of the author's experiences during the first 20 years of his life as a slave in Missouri.

The Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave

William Wells Brown (1814-1884) was a prominent abolitionist lecturer, novelist, playwright, and historian. Born into slavery in the Southern United States, Brown escaped to the North, where he worked for abolitionist causes and was a prolific writer and lecturer. In 1847, he published the Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave, Written by Himself, which became a bestseller second only to Frederick Douglassa narrative. He was also a pioneer in several different literary genres, including travel writing, fiction, and drama, and wrote what is considered to be the first novel by an African American: Clotel; or, The Presidentas Daughter (1853). However, because the novel was published in England, the book is not the first African-American novel published in the United States. Most scholars agree that Brown is the first published African-American playwright. He wrote two plays, The Experience; or, How to Give a Northern Man a Backbone (1856) and The Escape; or, A Leap for Freedom (1858). Brown also wrote several historical works, including: The Black Man: His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements (1863), The Negro in the American Revolution (1867) and The Rising Son (1873).

Three Years in Europe; Or, Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met

William Wells Brown spent the first twenty years of his life mainly in St. Louis and the surrounding areas working as a house servant, field hand, a tavern keeper's assistant, a printer's helper, an assistant in a medical office, and a handyman for James Walker, a Missouri slave trader. During his time with Walker, Brown made three trips up and down the Mississippi River. These trips allowed him to encounter slavery from every perspective and provided experiences he would draw on throughout his writing career.

The Autobiographies of William Wells Brown

From Fugitive Slave to Free Man

James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw

Ellen Craft

Sojourner Truth

Harriet Ann Jacobs

Henry Bibb

Jacob D. Green

Nat Turner

Olaudah Equiano

Presents a collection of detailed narratives by African American writers who experienced slavery, and shows how their stories had an impact on the social history of America before emancipation.

Slave Narratives

Excerpt from The Black Man: His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements The calumniators and traducers of the Negro are to be found, mainly, among two classes. The first and most relentless are those who have done them the greatest injury, by being instrumental in their enslavement and consequent degradation. They de light to descant upon the natural inferiority of the blacks, and claim that we were destined only for a servile condition, entitled neither to liberty nor the legitimate pursuit of happiness. The second class are those who are ignorant of the characteristics of the race, and are the mere echoes of the first. To meet and refute these misrepresentations, and to supply a deficiency, long felt in the community, of a work containing sketches of individuals who, by their own genius, capacity, and intellectual development. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements (Classic Reprint)

The Black Man

Reprint of the original, first published in 1863.

His antecedents, his genius, and his achievements

In Large Print

The Black Man; His Antecedents, His Genius, And His Achievements

Harriet Jacobs

William Still

Booker T. Washington

Mary Prince

Solomon Northup

Elizabeth Keckley

Stephen Smith

Ida B. Wells-Barnett

Willie Lynch

Lydia Maria Child

Charles Ball

Sarah H. Bradford

Louis Hughes

Josiah Henson

Austin Steward

L. S. Thompson

Kate Drumgoold

Lucy A. Delaney

Moses Grandy

John Gabriel Stedman

Margaretta Matilda Odell

Thomas S. Gaines

Brantz Mayer

Theodore Canot

Daniel Drayton

Thomas Clarkson

F. G. De Fontaine

John Dixon Long

Joseph Mountain

This unique collection consists of the most influential narratives of former slaves and the stories of people who have helped them. With their powerful & unflinching stories, they changed people's convictions and shook the very foundation of slavery: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass 12 Years a Slave by Solomon Northup The Underground Railroad The Willie Lynch Letter: The Making of Slave! Confessions of Nat Turner Narrative of Sojourner Truth Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, by Harriet Jacobs Harriet: The Moses of Her People History of Mary Prince Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom, by William and Ellen Craft Thirty Years a Slave: From Bondage to Freedom, by Louis Hughes Narrative of the Life of J. D. Green, a Runaway Slave Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington Narrative of Olaudah Equiano Behind The Scenes - 30 Years a Slave & 4 Years in the White House, by Elizabeth Keckley Father Henson's Story of His Own Life Fifty Years in Chains, by Charles Ball Twenty-Two Years a Slave and Forty Years a Freeman, by Austin Steward Narrative of the Life of Henry Bibb Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave Story of Mattie J. Jackson A Slave Girl's Story, by Kate Drumgoold From the Darkness Cometh the Light, by Lucy A. Delaney Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy Narrative of Joanna; An Emancipated Slave, of Surinam Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown, Who Escaped in a 3x2 Feet Box Memoir and Poems of Phillis Wheatley Buried Alive For a Quarter of a Century - Life of William Walker Pictures of Slavery in Church and State Dying Speech of Stephen Smith Who Was Executed for Burglary Life of Joseph Mountain Charge of Aiding and Abetting in the Rescue of a Fugitive Slave Lynch Law in All Its Phases Duty of Disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Act Captain Canot Pearl Incident: Personal Memoir of Daniel Drayton History of Abolition of African Slave-Trade History of American Abolitionism

UNCHAINED - Powerful & Unflinching Narratives Of Former Slaves: 28 True Life Stories in One Volume

This edition brings to you the finest collection of personal memoirs from the true champions of liberty. With their powerful narratives, they have changed people's convictions about slavery and shook the very foundation of this social evil: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass 12 Years a Slave by Solomon Northup The Underground Railroad The Willie Lynch Letter: The Making of Slave! Confessions of Nat Turner Narrative of Sojourner Truth Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, by Harriet Jacobs Harriet: The Moses of Her People History of Mary Prince Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom, by William and Ellen Craft Thirty Years a Slave: From Bondage to Freedom, by Louis Hughes Narrative of the Life of J. D. Green, a Runaway Slave Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington Narrative of Olaudah Equiano Behind The Scenes - 30 Years a Slave & 4 Years in the White House, by Elizabeth Keckley Father Henson's Story of His Own Life Fifty Years in Chains, by Charles Ball Twenty-Two Years a Slave and Forty Years a Freeman, by Austin Steward Narrative of the Life of Henry Bibb Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave Story of Mattie J. Jackson A Slave Girl's Story, by Kate Drumgoold From the Darkness Cometh the Light, by Lucy A. Delaney Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy Narrative of Joanna; An Emancipated Slave, of Surinam Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown, Who Escaped in a 3x2 Feet Box Memoir and Poems of Phillis Wheatley Buried Alive For a Quarter of a Century - Life of William Walker Pictures of Slavery in Church and State Dying Speech of Stephen Smith Who Was Executed for Burglary Life of Joseph Mountain Charge of Aiding and Abetting in the Rescue of a Fugitive Slave Lynch Law in All Its Phases Duty of Disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Act Captain Canot Pearl Incident: Personal Memoir of Daniel Drayton History of Abolition of African Slave-Trade History of American Abolitionism

100$ REWARD ON MY HEAD – Powerful & Unflinching Memoirs Of Former Slaves: 28 Narratives in One Volume

The Anti-Slavery Harp: A Collection of Songs for Anti-Slavery Meetings by William Wells Brown

A Collection of Songs for Anti-Slavery Meetings

The Anti-Slavery Harp

Hannah Webster Foster

Written in epistolary form and drawn from actual events, Brown’s The Power of Sympathy (1789) and Foster’s The Coquette (1797) were two of the earliest novels published in the United States. Both novels reflect the eighteenth-century preoccupation with the role of women as safekeepers of the young country’s morality.

The Power of Sympathy and The Coquette

Three Years in Europe: Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met

Brief (1-10 pages) biographies of notable blacks, mostly from the 18th and 19th centuries, mostly Americans. Also includes an autobiography of the author.

His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements

Widely considered the first African-American novelist, William Wells Brown's (ca. 1814-1884) 1853 novel, Clotel, or the President's Daughter, chronicled the fate of the daughter of Thomas Jefferson and his black housekeeper. Yet, in his own day, Brown was perhaps more important as a rousing orator, scholar, and cultural critic. He escaped from slavery in 1834 and worked on Lake Erie steamboats in Buffalo, New York, helping slaves escape into Canada and lecturing for the New York Anti-Slavery Society. After moving to Boston in 1847, he began writing his autobiography, The Narrative of William W. Brown. By 1850, the book had appeared in four American and five British editions and rivaled the popularity of Frederick Douglass's Narrative written two years earlier. Throughout the late 1840s and 50s, Brown continued to lecture to further the antislavery cause and wrote prolifically. In addition to Clotel, he published the first drama written by an African American and the first military history of African Americans. In his writings and speeches, William Wells Brown deliberately resists the tone of heroic resistance and eloquent outrage set by Frederick Douglass. Brown's rhetorical strategy involved telling stories of individuals and individual encounters in which the art of simple understatement and guileless self-presentation prevailed over cant, bullying, and hypocrisy. Brown's often humorous and deceptively artless tone appealed to politically active women who were claiming the moral high ground not only on questions of abolition but also on temperance and women's rights. Unlike Douglass, whose literary output can be described as a long conversation with the founding fathers and literary lions about freedom, liberty, and what it means to be an American, Brown emphasized-- with humor and a cosmopolitan gentility-- the concerns of middle class family life: education, parenting, and the damage that slavery was doing to American society. This volume, with a foreword by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., will introduce readers to Brown's lesser-known, but no less powerful works, placed in the context of the era's debates on slavery, gender, morality, and the discursive limits put on anti-slavery advocacy. The collection presents Brown's anti-slavery works and the contemporary response to them in light of Brown's own attention to the role of women writers and political advocates in this period. Garrett's and Robbins's introduction to these texts emphasizes Brown's awareness and even use of women's voices in political discourse as a way of distinguishing himself from other black male voices of the time. The selection of texts also demonstrates Brown's willingness to use and recycle any texts at hand-- including his own-- in order to appeal to his immediate audience or readership. While making Brown's more obviously political work available to a wider audience, the book reclaims Brown as an important black influence in the American nineteenth century.

William Wells Brown

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