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Twelve Years a Slave

Twelve Years a Slave is an 1853 memoir and slave narrative by Solomon Northup as told to and written by David Wilson. Northup, a black man who was born free in New York state, details himself being tricked to go to Washington, D.C., where he was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the Deep South. He was in bondage for 12 years in Louisiana before he was able to secretly get information to friends and family in New York, who in turn secured his release with the aid of the state. Northup's account provides extensive details on the slave markets in Washington, D.C., and New Orleans, and describes at length cotton and sugar cultivation and slave treatment on major plantations in Louisiana.

This article is about the 1853 memoir. For other uses, see Twelve Years a Slave (disambiguation).

Author

English

Autobiography, slave narrative

1853[2]

United States

Print (hardcover)

301.45

The work was published by Derby & Miller of Auburn, New York[1] eight years before the American Civil War and soon after Harriet Beecher Stowe's best-selling novel about slavery, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), to which Northup's book lent factual support. Northup's book, dedicated to Stowe, sold 30,000 copies, making it a bestseller in its own right.[3]


Although the memoir was published in several editions in the 19th century and later cited by scholarly works on slavery in the United States, it fell into public obscurity for nearly 100 years. It was re-discovered on separate occasions by two Louisiana historians, Sue Eakin (Louisiana State University at Alexandria) and Joseph Logsdon (University of New Orleans).[4] In the early 1960s, they researched and retraced Solomon Northup's journey[5] and co-edited a historically annotated version that was published by Louisiana State University Press (1968).[6]


The memoir has been adapted as two film versions, produced as the 1984 PBS television film Solomon Northup's Odyssey and the 2013 film 12 Years a Slave, which won multiple Oscars including Best Picture.[7]

Twelve Years a Slave is in the public domain; e-book versions can be downloaded from several sites and many reprints are still in print by multiple publishers (see 'External links' section)

In 1968, historians Sue Eakin and Joseph Logsdon, both based in Louisiana, published an edited and annotated version of Northup's narrative. Updated and illustrated editions of this work have since been published, including an adaptation for younger readers.

[18]

In 2012, self-published the biography Solomon Northup: His Life Before and After Slavery. The book's Appendix C provides the publishing history for Twelve Years a Slave during the 19th century. The book was expanded and re-issued by Praeger in August 2013 as Solomon Northup: The Complete Story of the Author of Twelve Years a Slave, ISBN 978-1440829741, with co-authors Fiske, Clifford W. Brown, and Rachel Seligman.

David Fiske

The full text of Twelve Years a Slave at Wikisource

at Standard Ebooks

Twelve Years a Slave

at Project Gutenberg

Twelve Years a Slave

public domain audiobook at LibriVox

Twelve Years a Slave

at the Internet Archive (scanned original editions with some color illustrated)

Twelve Years a Slave