William Wells Brown, 1814?-1884, was born into slavery in Kentucky to a negro mother and their white owner, but escaped in 1824 to live in Boston and in Europe where he worked as an abolitionist. He is thought to have been the first African-American novelist.
His novel
Clotel, or the President's Daughter was published in England in 1853, and was little known in the U.S.A. He reworked the text as
Clotelle: a Tale of the Southern States, in 1864. In 1867 he extended the story as
Clotelle; or the Colored Heroine.
This first version is written in British English, contains an extensive "Memoir of the Author," and tells of Clotel's suicide to escape recapture by slave traders
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