Historical Fiction Brown, William Wells: Clotelle: A Tale of the Southern States: v1 12 Sept 2018

[AlexBell]

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, and it was marketed to Union soldiers in the Civil War. In 1867 he extended the story as Clotelle; or the Colored Heroine.

Clotelle: a Tale of the Southern States does not contain the Preface and the "Memoir of the Author" found in Clotel, or the President's Daughter, the chapters do not have epigraphs, and there is much less poetry. Clotelle forms a relationship with Jerome, (a full blood negro,) enables him to escape, later escapes to Europe with a French soldier and marries him, and is reunited with Jerome several years later.

The text source cannot be named since several typos were found and corrected. The names of ships have been put in italics, and references to children have been changed from it to him or her. The text is in American English, and some changes were made to spelling, punctuation, and hyphenation using oxforddictionaries.com.

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