African-American Classics Collection: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Twelve Years a Slave, Up from Slavery, The Souls of Black Folk

FOUR SELECTED WORKS OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN LITERATURE IN ONE CONVENIENT VOLUME!

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is an memoir and treatise on abolition written by African-American orator and former slave Frederick Douglass during his time in Lynn, Massachusetts. It is generally held to be the most famous of a number of narratives written by former slaves during the same period. In factual detail, the text describes the events of his life and is considered to be one of the most influential pieces of literature to fuel the abolitionist movement of the early 19th century in the United States.

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.

In Up from Slavery, Washington traces his journey from slave to educator. The early sections document his childhood as a slave and his efforts to get an education, and he directly credits his education with his later success as a man of action in his community and the nation.

The Souls of Black Folk is a groundbreaking work of American literature first published in 1903 is a cornerstone of African-American literary history and a seminal work in the field of sociology. The book contains several essays on race, to develop this work, Du Bois drew from his own experiences as an African American in American society. Outside of its notable relevance in African-American history, The Souls of Black Folk also holds an important place in social science as one of the early works in the field of sociology.