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Three Classic African-American Novels: The Heroic Slave; Clotel; Our Nig
The early literature of African-Americans is an important part of our cultural heritage, and here, collected in one volume, are three of the most significant of these works: The Heroic Slave, Clotel, and Our Nig. These form a milestone collection of the pioneering novels of African-American literature.
368 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published August 7, 1990
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About the author
Frederick Douglass
1,071 books1,740 followersFrederick Douglass (né Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey) was born a slave in the state of Maryland in 1818. After his escape from slavery, Douglass became a renowned abolitionist, editor and feminist. Having escaped from slavery at age 20, he took the name Frederick Douglass for himself and became an advocate of abolition. Douglass traveled widely, and often perilously, to lecture against slavery.
His first of three autobiographies, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, was published in 1845. In 1847 he moved to Rochester, New York, and started working with fellow abolitionist Martin R. Delany to publish a weekly anti-slavery newspaper, North Star. Douglass was the only man to speak in favor of Elizabeth Cady Stanton's controversial plank of woman suffrage at the first women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. As a signer of the Declaration of Sentiments, Douglass also promoted woman suffrage in his North Star. Douglass and Stanton remained lifelong friends.
In 1870 Douglass launched The New National Era out of Washington, D.C. He was nominated for vice-president by the Equal Rights Party to run with Victoria Woodhull as presidential candidate in 1872. He became U.S. marshal of the District of Columbia in 1877, and was later appointed minister resident and consul-general to Haiti. His District of Columbia home is a national historic site. D. 1895.
More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic...
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p1...
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/exhi...
http://www.loc.gov/collection/frederi...
http://www.nps.gov/frdo/index.htm
http://www.cr.nps.gov/museum/exhibits...
His first of three autobiographies, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, was published in 1845. In 1847 he moved to Rochester, New York, and started working with fellow abolitionist Martin R. Delany to publish a weekly anti-slavery newspaper, North Star. Douglass was the only man to speak in favor of Elizabeth Cady Stanton's controversial plank of woman suffrage at the first women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. As a signer of the Declaration of Sentiments, Douglass also promoted woman suffrage in his North Star. Douglass and Stanton remained lifelong friends.
In 1870 Douglass launched The New National Era out of Washington, D.C. He was nominated for vice-president by the Equal Rights Party to run with Victoria Woodhull as presidential candidate in 1872. He became U.S. marshal of the District of Columbia in 1877, and was later appointed minister resident and consul-general to Haiti. His District of Columbia home is a national historic site. D. 1895.
More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic...
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p1...
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/exhi...
http://www.loc.gov/collection/frederi...
http://www.nps.gov/frdo/index.htm
http://www.cr.nps.gov/museum/exhibits...
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
June 30, 2011
I probably originally picked this up because of the first novella by Frederick Douglass. I read Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass sometime last year and was interested to read more; this book was appealing because it includes his The Heroic Slave - the one work of fiction he wrote in 1852.
The heroic slave is Madison Washington, a slave who . It's hard to discuss the plot without giving away anything, so it's better to just leave it behind a spoiler warning. Do what you will with it. Douglass was and is known for his antislavery writing and his lectures on abolition, and while reading a story like The Heroic Slave it's obvious why. Surely a lot of what he wrote in this story was taken from his own experiences as a slave, so I wonder how much was fiction and how much was autobiography.
The second book included is Clotel by William Wells Brown who was also born into slavery, not gaining his freedom until well into his twenties.
Clotel, written in 1853, is considered to be the first novel published by an African American. (The Heroic Slave, though published a year earlier, is a novella.) This is a great book about slavery and its effects on African American families, touching in large detail on how someone of mixed descent fit into the environment. Not surprisingly the story was most likely inspired by rumors of Thomas Jefferson getting his nasty on with a black woman and fathering a child. Good job, Tommy!
Since Clotel was first published in England, this leads us to the last story in the book, Our Nig, written in 1859 by Harriet E. Wilson and published in the US, making it the first book published by an African American in North America. You go, girl!
Our Nig is an autobiographical slave narrative focusing on one young woman's trials and tribulations on the road to independence - both physical and economic independence.
All three are wonderful reads, but Clotel was by far the one of most interest to me. The other two were faster reads, but no less important. I'm settling on a 3-star rating for the book as a whole, though Clotel by itself would be 4. I got all mathematical and figured the average and everything, which is exciting on its own because anyone who knows me knows I don't figure averages (or do anything else with numbers for that matter if I can get away with it).
The heroic slave is Madison Washington, a slave who . It's hard to discuss the plot without giving away anything, so it's better to just leave it behind a spoiler warning. Do what you will with it. Douglass was and is known for his antislavery writing and his lectures on abolition, and while reading a story like The Heroic Slave it's obvious why. Surely a lot of what he wrote in this story was taken from his own experiences as a slave, so I wonder how much was fiction and how much was autobiography.
The second book included is Clotel by William Wells Brown who was also born into slavery, not gaining his freedom until well into his twenties.
Clotel, written in 1853, is considered to be the first novel published by an African American. (The Heroic Slave, though published a year earlier, is a novella.) This is a great book about slavery and its effects on African American families, touching in large detail on how someone of mixed descent fit into the environment. Not surprisingly the story was most likely inspired by rumors of Thomas Jefferson getting his nasty on with a black woman and fathering a child. Good job, Tommy!
Since Clotel was first published in England, this leads us to the last story in the book, Our Nig, written in 1859 by Harriet E. Wilson and published in the US, making it the first book published by an African American in North America. You go, girl!
Our Nig is an autobiographical slave narrative focusing on one young woman's trials and tribulations on the road to independence - both physical and economic independence.
All three are wonderful reads, but Clotel was by far the one of most interest to me. The other two were faster reads, but no less important. I'm settling on a 3-star rating for the book as a whole, though Clotel by itself would be 4. I got all mathematical and figured the average and everything, which is exciting on its own because anyone who knows me knows I don't figure averages (or do anything else with numbers for that matter if I can get away with it).
Want to Read
February 5, 2015My question of the morning was, are there any black novels at all from the 1800s? And the answer is yes! Here they are, or anyway the three I found mentioned first. That and The Bondwoman's Narrative.
Furthering my theory that El has read everything, she's got a great review of these.
Furthering my theory that El has read everything, she's got a great review of these.
May 25, 2018
This book has been on my shelf unread for years and years. I'm teaching early American lit in the fall, so I wanted to read something to put me back in that space, and this was a good way to do that, both the novels themselves and the introductory material.
The introduction makes the case that black writers in 1850 needed the freedom to write fiction to tell their stories, but one thing that was so striking in these novels is the degree to which these narratives are interested in white consciousnesses. So in "The Heroic Slave," Madison Washington lacks interiority, and in "Clotel," the drama mostly concerns characters like Georgiana and her fiance-husband. (I'm not sure how much this applies to "Our Nig," which is arguably a less sophisticated piece of craft?). It's telling, to me, that given access to fiction, the two writers use that t0ol to understand how other people, white people, can rationalize their behavior. And it's really interesting, the way the different arguments for and against abolition are mustered. This is especially striking in "Clotel," which as novels go is chock-a-block of all kinds of stuff, including more than glancing references to Nat Turner, abolition, and a bull-bear cage fight in New Orleans.
As far as getting back in the mindset of the fiction of the earlier American period, it's notable how didactic these narratives are: Douglass and Wells Brown both have very explicit designs on their readers, and they array their narrative to make those designs manifest. There's less of this in "Our Nig," maybe in revealing ways. Wilson's novel owes a lot to the sentimental tradition, and the way this kind of rhetorical strategy focuses on the individual, which means she doesn't quite have a broader design. Since it's also written from the position of a free, if oppressed woman, it never seems to need to make the case that Freda has an internal life. It's a given, even if that internal space makes life hard to Freda.
The introduction makes the case that black writers in 1850 needed the freedom to write fiction to tell their stories, but one thing that was so striking in these novels is the degree to which these narratives are interested in white consciousnesses. So in "The Heroic Slave," Madison Washington lacks interiority, and in "Clotel," the drama mostly concerns characters like Georgiana and her fiance-husband. (I'm not sure how much this applies to "Our Nig," which is arguably a less sophisticated piece of craft?). It's telling, to me, that given access to fiction, the two writers use that t0ol to understand how other people, white people, can rationalize their behavior. And it's really interesting, the way the different arguments for and against abolition are mustered. This is especially striking in "Clotel," which as novels go is chock-a-block of all kinds of stuff, including more than glancing references to Nat Turner, abolition, and a bull-bear cage fight in New Orleans.
As far as getting back in the mindset of the fiction of the earlier American period, it's notable how didactic these narratives are: Douglass and Wells Brown both have very explicit designs on their readers, and they array their narrative to make those designs manifest. There's less of this in "Our Nig," maybe in revealing ways. Wilson's novel owes a lot to the sentimental tradition, and the way this kind of rhetorical strategy focuses on the individual, which means she doesn't quite have a broader design. Since it's also written from the position of a free, if oppressed woman, it never seems to need to make the case that Freda has an internal life. It's a given, even if that internal space makes life hard to Freda.
March 10, 2008
I picked this up during Black American week--who could resist a three in one book! I love Afro-American contemporary literature--but these are the roots of that genre. Must reads for all Americans. Of course, everyone must read more by Frederick Douglas.
October 18, 2007
Read this in English 43 taught by Professor Bill Cook.
November 1, 2008
All three stories were pretty good.
November 5, 2020
Edited and with an Introduction by William L. Andrews 1990
Frederick Douglass first published this novella in 1853 in his own newspaper. Today called "the first work of fiction in African American literature". Under 50 pp.
It embroiders on a historical incident in 1841, when Madison Washington leads the 134 slaves on the ship to mutiny and steer the ship into Nassau [where they were given asylum and freed]. History does not record the past or future of Washington, so Douglass invents these for him. In doing so, he gives Washington "a rigorous self-examination and high-minded purpose...an uncompromising commitment to justice balanced by a disposition toward mercy". [Intro]
To convince his [white] audiences, Douglass gives us the testimony of two white men of good reputation who emphasize that Washington was a superior and honorable man, with dignity of manner and eloquence of speech. I see now that what these two men say, in the story, about Washington imply that blacks are humans just like whites are. All they say would have been anathema to [Southern] whites.
Robert Levine [in The Lives of Frederick Douglass]: Douglass’s sole work of fiction, The Heroic Slave (1853), about the 1842 slave revolt aboard the slave ship Creole, whose leader (“his torn sleeves disclosed arms like polished iron”) seems close enough to self-portraiture to justify Levine’s remark that the novella “has the feel of a play starring Frederick Douglass.”
==============
Andrews's Intro tells how painfully little is known of the author of OUR NIG [80 pp]. She appears to have needed the money she hoped to earn by writing and publishing this short work, 1859, and presumably the story is partly autobiographical. It is a miserable miserable story. You want to wring the necks of the whole family the main character worked for, in New England. The husband and other relatives of the sadistic housewife-boss are shown to be well-inclined towards Alfrado yet none of them stands up for her. Although technically not a slave, Alfrado [mixed race] had no money and could therefore not in any way escape or move anywhere else.
"The first novel by an African American woman, and the first to examine the life of an ordinary black person in realistic detail." It implicitly shows "how the northern caste system and southern slavery were interrelated".
===================
"Clotel; or, The President's Daughter: A narrative of slave life in the United States. With a sketch of the author's life" 210 pp.
William Wells Brown's 'novel' is preceded by a 35-page "Narrative of the Life and Escape of William Wells Brown", written in the third person but by himself. He spent quite some years in England, being asked to speak for anti-slavery there.
Turns out that Douglass's 'Narrative' about his early life was published in 1845; Brown published his "Narrative" in 1847, and Sojourner Truth her "Narrative" in 1850.
"Clotel" does tell the story of the mixed-race, light-skinned, beautiful Clotel, but it is interspersed with a great many other tales [presumably all true] about Clotel's mother, Clotel's daughter, and other enslaved persons. I get the impression Brown wants to give us a good picture of several angles of what slavery did and how it worked and its effects on individuals. It is eye-opening. Since then I have read more about this business of the Deep South needed more slaves and more northern slave states having an excess, so there was a whole trade of buying up 'excess' slaves in Richmond??? and sending them by ship to New Orleans, where they were sold on the slave market there. Brown apparently had a job helping one of these horrendous traders do all this, and he reports here on just how this system worked.
Brown's 'novel' states that Clotel's mother [also enslaved and traded down to New Orleans later on] was a daughter of Thomas Jefferson.
Although not [in my view] a novel, Brown's collection of narratives about Clotel and others is very worthwhile reading.
Frederick Douglass first published this novella in 1853 in his own newspaper. Today called "the first work of fiction in African American literature". Under 50 pp.
It embroiders on a historical incident in 1841, when Madison Washington leads the 134 slaves on the ship to mutiny and steer the ship into Nassau [where they were given asylum and freed]. History does not record the past or future of Washington, so Douglass invents these for him. In doing so, he gives Washington "a rigorous self-examination and high-minded purpose...an uncompromising commitment to justice balanced by a disposition toward mercy". [Intro]
To convince his [white] audiences, Douglass gives us the testimony of two white men of good reputation who emphasize that Washington was a superior and honorable man, with dignity of manner and eloquence of speech. I see now that what these two men say, in the story, about Washington imply that blacks are humans just like whites are. All they say would have been anathema to [Southern] whites.
Robert Levine [in The Lives of Frederick Douglass]: Douglass’s sole work of fiction, The Heroic Slave (1853), about the 1842 slave revolt aboard the slave ship Creole, whose leader (“his torn sleeves disclosed arms like polished iron”) seems close enough to self-portraiture to justify Levine’s remark that the novella “has the feel of a play starring Frederick Douglass.”
==============
Andrews's Intro tells how painfully little is known of the author of OUR NIG [80 pp]. She appears to have needed the money she hoped to earn by writing and publishing this short work, 1859, and presumably the story is partly autobiographical. It is a miserable miserable story. You want to wring the necks of the whole family the main character worked for, in New England. The husband and other relatives of the sadistic housewife-boss are shown to be well-inclined towards Alfrado yet none of them stands up for her. Although technically not a slave, Alfrado [mixed race] had no money and could therefore not in any way escape or move anywhere else.
"The first novel by an African American woman, and the first to examine the life of an ordinary black person in realistic detail." It implicitly shows "how the northern caste system and southern slavery were interrelated".
===================
"Clotel; or, The President's Daughter: A narrative of slave life in the United States. With a sketch of the author's life" 210 pp.
William Wells Brown's 'novel' is preceded by a 35-page "Narrative of the Life and Escape of William Wells Brown", written in the third person but by himself. He spent quite some years in England, being asked to speak for anti-slavery there.
Turns out that Douglass's 'Narrative' about his early life was published in 1845; Brown published his "Narrative" in 1847, and Sojourner Truth her "Narrative" in 1850.
"Clotel" does tell the story of the mixed-race, light-skinned, beautiful Clotel, but it is interspersed with a great many other tales [presumably all true] about Clotel's mother, Clotel's daughter, and other enslaved persons. I get the impression Brown wants to give us a good picture of several angles of what slavery did and how it worked and its effects on individuals. It is eye-opening. Since then I have read more about this business of the Deep South needed more slaves and more northern slave states having an excess, so there was a whole trade of buying up 'excess' slaves in Richmond??? and sending them by ship to New Orleans, where they were sold on the slave market there. Brown apparently had a job helping one of these horrendous traders do all this, and he reports here on just how this system worked.
Brown's 'novel' states that Clotel's mother [also enslaved and traded down to New Orleans later on] was a daughter of Thomas Jefferson.
Although not [in my view] a novel, Brown's collection of narratives about Clotel and others is very worthwhile reading.
September 27, 2024
I thought I knew how horrific slavery was. I wasn't even close.
If I was to rate the books:
The President's Daughter: 6
Iola Leroy: 5
The Marrow of Tradition: 5 -- this one was remarkable.
Overall one of the most important reading experiences of my life.
If I was to rate the books:
The President's Daughter: 6
Iola Leroy: 5
The Marrow of Tradition: 5 -- this one was remarkable.
Overall one of the most important reading experiences of my life.
June 2, 2023
Three novels by African-American authors in the mid 1800s.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews