The slave narrative is a literary sub-genre that emerged from the written accounts of enslaved Africans in Great Britain and its colonies, including the later United States, Canada, and Caribbean nations. Some of the earliest memoirs of captivity known in England and the British Isles were written by white Europeans and later Americans captured and sometimes enslaved in North Africa, usually by Barbary pirates. These were part of a broad category of ‘captivity narratives’ by English-speaking Europeans.
For the Europeans and Americans, the division between captivity as slaves and as prisoners of war was not always clear. A broader name for these works is ‘captivity literature.’
Slave Narrative Six Pack presents six of the most famous examples of the genre:
Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup
Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839 by Frances Anne Kemble
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African by Olaudah Equiano
The Life of William H. Furness by William Still
Captain Canot; or, Twenty years of an African slaver: being an account of his career and adventures on the coast, in the interior, on shipboard, and in the West Indies by Brantz Mayer
Includes image gallery and link to free audio recording of
Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
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