Customer Reviews (1)

A few Reviews for the book
"The first . . . equals Douglass' own narrative; so it is surprising that it is not better known. The second is an entertaining tale of the author's lengthy sojourn in Europe."
-Publishers Weekly

"One of the 50 best books by and about African-Americans."
-Blackboard * African-American Book News

"William Wells Brown was born a slave in 1814. He died 70 years later in Boston, Massachusetts, a renowned anti-slavery lecturer, professional man of letters, and practicing physician. "
-The Washington Post

Brown was a runaway slave turned abolitionist and advocate for the rights of African Americans in the mode of Frederick Douglass. The current volume is a compendium of his two best-known literary works. The first, published in 1847, deals with the author's life in slavery and his escape to freedom in the North. As an account of the South's peculiar institution and of one man's triumph over it, it equals Douglass's own narrative; so it is surprising that it is not better known, especially because Brown's life parallels his in so many ways. The second work is an entertaining tale of the author's
lengthy sojourn in Europe in the early 1850s, where he was sent by abolitionists to lobby support for their cause by being a living example, dispelling Southern propaganda about the innate inferiority of blacks. While in Europe, Brown freely rubs elbows with Victor Hugo and members of the British aristocracy and literati. Editor Jefferson, associate professor of history at Haverford College, has omitted several chapters of American Fugitive that he believes would be less interesting to modern readers. He provides a useful introduction and liberally footnotes the text of both works.
- Publishers Weekly ... Read more

Book Description
In From Fugitive Slave to Free Man, two of Brown's best-known writings, Narrative of William W. Brown, A Fugitive Slave. Written by Himself and My Southern Home: or, The South and Its People, are reprinted together with an expanded introduction by William L. Andrews.Taken together, both of the books included in this volume provide fascinating contrasts, especially in their depictions of slavery, and illustrate the creative innovations Brown developed in various forms of life writing. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A uniquely insightful and powerful historical narrative
Deftly edited for modern publication by William L. Andrews (E. Maynard Adams Professor of English, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill), From Fugitive Slave To Free Man is a compilation of the two autobiographical works "Narrative of William W. Brown, A Fugitive Slave, Written by Himself" and "My Southern Home" by William Wells Brown, who born in 1814 to a slave mother and a white father. Brown's varied life, and his perspective of slavery from all sides, make for a uniquely insightful and powerful historical narrative that has weathered the test of time. A welcome and valued contribution to American History, From Fugitive Slave To Free Man is a welcome addition to any academic or community library Black Studies collection. ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (1)

A wise and intelligent book by a key Black Leader
Today when we think of pre-Civil War African American leaders, Frederick Douglass is remember solely, and perhaps some remember the heroism of Sojourner Truth.However, there were a number of other African American leaders who help lead the struggle for freedom and dignity. Actually, it is rather surprising that so many of them like Douglass and Martin Delany Jr. also wrote.

Brown certainly was one of the major African American political and intellectual leaders of the 19th Century.Not only was he an antislavery activist, but he was one of the first to write works of African American history and he was among the first African Americans to publish a novel, his Clotel, the President's Daughter.

Not only does this narrative provide the usual chilling view of slavery, and what we can celebrate is the usual ability of Black men and women and their supporters to rise above, out wit and out struggle the slave masters, but also some clear political foresight.

Brown's narrative was entered into a discourse that was opened by the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin about what force would bring an end to slavery.Stowe had put forward the idea of becoming born again in Christ through the evangilical experience inspired by the heroism of slaves, leading to a religious revival that would recognize slavery as the number one sin in the World. Delany proposed a Pan-African cultural revolution to set up a free Black nation that would lead an international slave revolt.Brown's prediction of the solution, and his recognition of the nature of the conflict, not simply between slavery and abolitionism, but between slavery and industrial capitalism, the actual lines of the civil war, was brilliant, prescient, and right.

I enjoyed reading this years ago and wish I hadn't read it yet, so I could have the joy of discovering it again! ... Read more

Book Description
First published in December 1853, Clotel was written amid then unconfirmed rumors that Thomas Jefferson had fathered children with one of his slaves. The story begins with the auction of his mistress, here called Currer, and their two daughters, Clotel and Althesa. The Virginian who buys Clotel falls in love with her, gets her pregnant, seems to promise marriage—then sells her. Escaping from the slave dealer, Clotel returns to Virginia disguised as a white man in order to rescue her daughter, Mary, a slave in her father’s house. A fast-paced and harrowing tale of slavery and freedom, of the hypocrisies of a nation founded on democratic principles, Clotel is more than a sensationalist novel. It is a founding text of the African American novelistic tradition, a brilliantly composed and richly detailed exploration of human relations in a new world in which race is a cultural construct. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Great Novel
This is an excellent novel and one that would sure to have your mind pondering about the basis of the book ..."Or the Presidents Daughter" a must read to everyone... Truth is crucial.

Essential Reading
This book is essential reading for any student of African American literature. The birth of real African American literary tradition dates from 1863 when Wm. Wells Brown wrote "Clotel," the story of the hardships of a mulatto family. The book is available free in e-text form from Project Gutenberg. http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/2046 ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (2)

The Reality Hits Us ALL
This is a exemplary novel that also deals with the harsh realities of slavery.This novel distinctly tells a true story,which is relevant to ALL Americans (believe it or not. This is a must reader for ALL.

rediscovered classic, gets the treatment it deserves
This, reader, is an unvarnished narrative of one doomed by the laws of the Southern States to be a slave.It tells not only its own story of grief, but speaks of a thousand wrongs and woes beside, which never see the light; all the more bitter and dreadful, because no help can relieve, no sympathy can mitigate, and no hope can cheer. -William Wells Brown, Clotel, or The President's Daughter

Clotel would have historic interest simply by virtue of the fact that William Wells Brown appears tohave been the first African American to write a novel.But it's not merely a literary curiosity; it is alsoan eminently readable and emotionally powerful, if forgivably melodramatic, portrait of thedehumanizing horrors of slave life in the Ante-bellum South.Brown, himself an escaped slave, tellsthe story of the slave Currer and her daughters, Clotel and Althesa, and of their attempts to escape fromslavery.The central conceit of the story is that the unacknowledged father of the girls is ThomasJefferson himself.

There is an immediacy to the stories here--of slave auctions, of families being torn apart, of card gameswhere humans are wagered and lost, of sickly slaves being purchased for the express purpose of resalefor medical experimentation upon their imminent deaths, of suicides and of many more indignities andbrutalities--which no textbook can adequately convey.Though the characters tend too much to thearchetypal, Brown does put a human face on this most repellent of American tragedies. He also makesextensive use (so extensive that he has been accused, it seems unfairly, of plagiarism) of actualsermons, lectures, political pamphlets, newspaper advertisements, and the like, to give the booksomething of a docudrama effect.

The Bedford Cultural Edition of the book, edited by Robert S. Levine, has extensive footnotes and anumber of helpful essays on Brown and on the sources, even reproducing some of them verbatim. Overall, it gives the novel the kind of serious presentation and treatment which it deserves, but forobvious reasons has not received in the past.Brown's style is naturally a little bit dated and his passionsare too distant for us to feel them immediately, but as you read the horrifying scenes of blacks beingtreated like chattel, you quickly come to share his moral outrage at this most shameful chapter in ourhistory.

GRADE : B ... Read more

Book Description
The book contains the biography of an American bondman William Wells Brown, which was written by his daughter Josephine Brown. It also presents the precedent-setting biography of Martin R. Delany, which helped to introduce an analytical approach to biography writing in African-American letters.An unabashed success story of one man's military career during the Civil War and his subsequent work in the Freedman's Bureau during Reconstruction, this book, written at a crucial juncture in American history, creates a vivid portrait of a man who comes to represent the voice of national union, mediation of conflict between blacks and whites in the South, and a fair and equitable democratic society. ... Read more