Clotel - (Modern Library Classics) by William W Brown (Paperback)

About the Book

The first novel ever published by an African American, this incendiary, passionate tale is about Thomas Jefferson's secret mulatto daughter and her sale into slavery. "Clotel" is a jarring look at the history of race in America and an important historical document in its own right.

Book Synopsis

The first novel published by an African American, Clotel takes up the story, in circulation at the time, that Thomas Jefferson fathered an illegitimate mulatto daughter who was sold into slavery. Powerfully reimagining this story, and weaving together a variety of contemporary source materials, Brown fills the novel with daring escapes and encounters, as well as searing depictions of the American slave trade. An innovative and challenging work of literary invention, Clotel is receiving much renewed attention today.

William Wells Brown, though born into slavery, escaped to become one of the most prominent reformers of the nineteenth century and one of the earliest historians of the black experience. This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition reproduces the first, 1853, edition of Clotel and includes, as did that edition, his autobiographical narrative, "The Life and Escape of William Wells Brown," plus newly written notes.

Review Quotes

"A remarkable beginning for African-American fiction."
--Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

About the Author

William Wells Brown (ca. 1814-1884) was an abolitionist and social reformer best remembered as the United States' first black novelist and playwright, as well as one of the earliest African-American historians. After escaping from slavery on New Year's Day in 1834, he went on to publish a bestselling memoir, a collection of antislavery songs, the novel Clotel, and many other highly regarded works.

Hilton Als is a staff writer for The New Yorker. His work also appears in The New York Review of Books. He is the author of The Women and White Girls. He lives in New York.