Description

Brown (c.1814-84) was a prominent African-American abolitionist lecturer, novelist, playwright and historian. Born into slavery in Montgomery County, Kentucky, he escaped to Ohio in 1834 aged 20 and later settled in Boston where he worked for abolitionist causes and became a prolific writer. He was also a supporter of other causes including temperance, women's suffrage, pacifism, prison reform and an anti-tobacco movement. His novel Clotel (1853) was the first novel written by an African-American, and he was a pioneer in several different literary genres, including travel writing and drama. He was lecturing in England when the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law was passed in the US and only returned to America after his freedom had been purchased by a British couple, the Richardsons, who had done the same for Frederick Douglass. Once back in the US he gave lectures for the abolitionist movement in New York and Massachusetts and earned a reputation as a powerful orator. This memoir published in 1880 was his last work.