William Wells Brown: An African American Life

William Wells Brown: An African American Life PDF Author: Ezra Greenspan
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393242005
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 532

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Book Description
A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist 'Biography' A groundbreaking biography of the most pioneering and accomplished African-American writer of the nineteenth century. Born into slavery in Kentucky, raised on the Western frontier on the farm adjacent to Daniel Boone’s, “rented” out in adolescence to a succession of steamboat captains on the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, the young man known as “Sandy” reinvented himself as “William Wells” Brown after escaping to freedom. He lifted himself out of illiteracy and soon became an innovative, widely admired, and hugely popular speaker on antislavery circuits (both American and British) and went on to write the earliest African American works in a plethora of genres: travelogue, novel (the now canonized Clotel), printed play, and history. He also practiced medicine, ran for office, and campaigned for black uplift, temperance, and civil rights. Ezra Greenspan’s masterful work, elegantly written and rigorously researched, sets Brown’s life in the richly rendered context of his times, creating a fascinating portrait of an inventive writer who dared to challenge the racial orthodoxies and explore the racial complexities of nineteenth-century America.

William Wells Brown: An African American Life

William Wells Brown: An African American Life PDF Author: Ezra Greenspan
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393242005
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 532

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Book Description
A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist 'Biography' A groundbreaking biography of the most pioneering and accomplished African-American writer of the nineteenth century. Born into slavery in Kentucky, raised on the Western frontier on the farm adjacent to Daniel Boone’s, “rented” out in adolescence to a succession of steamboat captains on the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, the young man known as “Sandy” reinvented himself as “William Wells” Brown after escaping to freedom. He lifted himself out of illiteracy and soon became an innovative, widely admired, and hugely popular speaker on antislavery circuits (both American and British) and went on to write the earliest African American works in a plethora of genres: travelogue, novel (the now canonized Clotel), printed play, and history. He also practiced medicine, ran for office, and campaigned for black uplift, temperance, and civil rights. Ezra Greenspan’s masterful work, elegantly written and rigorously researched, sets Brown’s life in the richly rendered context of his times, creating a fascinating portrait of an inventive writer who dared to challenge the racial orthodoxies and explore the racial complexities of nineteenth-century America.

Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave

Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave PDF Author: William Wells Brown
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Slavery
Languages : en
Pages : 148

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Book Description
Narrative of the author's experiences as a slave in St. Louis and elsewhere.

William Wells Brown

William Wells Brown PDF Author: William Wells Brown
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820332240
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 487

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Book Description
"Brown wrote extensively as a journalist but was also a pioneer in other literary genres. His many groundbreaking works include Clotel, the first African American novel; The Escape: or, A Leap for Freedom, the first published African American play; Three Years in Europe, the first African American European travelogue; and The Negro in the American Rebellion, the first history of African American military service in the Civil War. Brown also wrote one of the most important fugitive slave narratives and a striking array of subsequent self-narratives so inventively shifting in content, form, and textual presentation as to place him second only to Frederick Douglass among nineteenth-century African American autobiographers.".

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

The Black Man; His Antecedents, His Genius, And His Achievements PDF Author: William Wells Brown
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 3387094817
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description


My Southern Home

My Southern Home PDF Author: William Wells Brown
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : African Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description


Narrative of William W. Brown

Narrative of William W. Brown PDF Author: William Wells Brown
Publisher: Graphic Arts Books
ISBN: 1513279114
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 49

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Book Description
Originally published in 1847, William W. Brown offers a first-person narrative that details his enslavement and the daring escape that ultimately led to his freedom. It’s a captivating tale and testament to the perseverance and strength of the human spirit. In this narrative, William W. Brown presents the true story of his birth and life as an enslaved African American. He provides a truthful look at his origins, noting the unfortunate dynamic between his Black mother and white father. Brown goes into great detail explaining the rules and regulations of plantation life. He also discusses working on a steamboat, which eventually leads to his escape. Narrative of William W. Brown is a sobering story that illuminates the horrors of an inhumane institution. It’s personal and vital record that gives insight into the darkest time in American history. With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Narrative of William W. Brown is both modern and readable.

The Travels of William Wells Brown, Including The Narrative of William Wells Brown, a Fugitive Slave, and the American Fugitive in Europe, Sketches of Places and People Abroad

The Travels of William Wells Brown, Including The Narrative of William Wells Brown, a Fugitive Slave, and the American Fugitive in Europe, Sketches of Places and People Abroad PDF Author: William Wells Brown
Publisher: Markus Wiener Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
This is the remarkable story of two trips by a fugitive slave: his dramatic andesperate journey up the Mississippi to the North into freedom, and his glorious voyage as an eloquent ambassador of the abolitionists to Europe. Includes two books in one. Illustrated.

The Works of William Wells Brown

The Works of William Wells Brown PDF Author: William Wells Brown
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195309634
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 521

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Book Description
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: Clotel & Other Writings (LOA #247)

William Wells Brown: Clotel & Other Writings (LOA #247) PDF Author: William Wells Brown
Publisher: Library of America
ISBN: 1598533142
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 1420

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Book Description
A showcase of the extraordinary career America’s first Black novelist and pivotal figure in African American literature “It is difficult to imagine any one of his contemporaries who contributed as much or as richly to so many genres.” —Henry Louis Gates Jr. Born a slave and kept functionally illiterate until he escaped at age nineteen, William Wells Brown (1814–1884) refashioned himself first as an agent of the Underground Railroad, then as an antislavery activist and self-taught orator, and finally as the author of a series of landmark works that made him, like Frederick Douglass, a foundational figure of African American literature. His controversial novel Clotel; or, the President’s Daughter (1853), a fictionalized account of the lives and struggles of Thomas Jefferson’s black daughters and granddaughters, is the first novel written by an African American. This Library of America volume brings it together with Brown’s other groundbreaking works: Narrative of William W. Brown: A Fugitive Slave, Written by Himself (1847), his first published book and an immediate bestseller, which describes his childhood, life in slavery, and eventual escape; later memoirs charting his life during the Civil War and Reconstruction; the first play (The Escape; or, A Leap for Freedom, 1858), travelogue (The American Fugitive in Europe, 1855), and history (The Black Man, His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements, 1862) written by an African American; and eighteen speeches and public letters from the 1840s, 50s, and 60s, many collected here for the first time. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

The Negro in the American Rebellion

The Negro in the American Rebellion PDF Author: William Wells Brown
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 406

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Book Description