Brown, William Wells: Three Years in Europe: v1, 26 Sept 2018
 

William Wells Brown, 1814?-1884, was born into slavery in Kentucky to a negro mother and a relative of their white owner, but escaped in 1834 to live in Boston and in Europe where he worked as an abolitionist. He returned to the U.S.A. in 1854 after an English family had purchased his freedom. He is thought to have been the first African-American novelist.

The book contains 23 letters written by William Wells Brown while traveling in Europe, mostly to the editor of the abolitionist newspaper The North Star. They mention the lack of racial prejudice in the people he met, his contacts and work with other abolitionists and escaped slaves, and memories of his own life. Many of these memories were used in the three versions of his Clotel/Clotelle novels.