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 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.
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, and it was marketed to Union soldiers in the Civil War. In 1867 he extended the story as
Clotelle; or the Colored Heroine.
The first chapter of
Clotelle; or the Colored Heroine adds a little to the first chapter of
Clotelle: a Tale of the Southern States, Georgiana come to a different end, and chapters are added telling of the return of Clotelle and Jerome to the United States to take part in the Civil War.
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