William Wells Brown, the subject of this narrative, was born a slave in Lexington, Kentucky. In 1834 he escaped from a steamboat in Cincinnati and found shelter at a Quaker family. In 1849 he started a journey through Europe, of which this book tells us. Brown is also known as the author of "Clotel", the first novel written by an Afro-American. When we consider that it is the production of a fugitive from slavery, who never in all his life passed so much as a day in a school, its claims upon our notice are manifest enough. We are glad that it has been allowed to go forth just as is was written, with its slight inaccuracies and inelegancies, the genuine product of the writer's brain. Mr. Brown's opportunities were good, and his sketches of persons and things are very lively. Many a graduate of our colleges would not make half so entertaining a volume.

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

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.

African American slave narratives of the 19th century recorded the grim realities of the antebellum South; they also provide the foundation for this compelling and revealing work on African American history and experiences. Naturally, it is not possible to really know what being a slave during the antebellum period in America was like without living the experience. But students CAN get eye-opening insight into what it was like through the gripping stories of bravery, courage, persistence, and resiliency in this collection of annotated slave narratives from the period. Each of the collected narratives includes an introduction that provides readers with key historical context on the particular life examined. Moreover, each narrative is accompanied by annotations that broaden the reader's comprehension of that primary document. The primary source documents in this volume tell enthralling stories, such as how slave woman Ellen Craft utilized her particularly pale complexion to pose as a free white man overseeing his slaves to free herself and her husband, and how Henry Brown successfully shipped himself to freedom in a box measuring scarcely 3 feet by two feet by six inches deep—despite being more than six feet tall.