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Cover of Twelve Years a Slave

Twelve Years a Slave

by Solomon Northup · 1853

Memoir · Classics

A Premium book: the first chapter is free to read, the rest comes with Premium.

Solomon Northup, a free Black man from New York, was kidnapped in Washington in 1841 and sold into slavery in Louisiana, where he lived for twelve years before he was freed. His account of that time and of his rescue was a bestseller in its day.

Content note: This 1853 memoir describes slavery, kidnapping, beatings and cruelty in plain detail, and uses racial language of its time that is offensive today.

27 chapters

A look inside

“It is a singular coincidence, that Solomon Northup was carried to a plantation in the Red River country⁠—that same region where the scene of Uncle Tom’s captivity was laid⁠—and his account of this plantation, and the mode of life there, and some incidents which he describes, form a striking parallel to that history.”

Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, p. 174

To Harriet Beecher Stowe: throughout the world, is identified with the great reform: this narrative, affording another key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin is respectfully dedicated.

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