We see that javascript is disabled or not supported by your browser - javascript is needed for important actions on the site. Read more

What's New - Home - Login

Member $avings: $81,587,868.18 | Books Available: 792,006 | Members Online: 50

Swap Used Books - Buy New Books at Great Prices!

How To Swap Books Sign Up Search submenu

PBS Market (New Books)

Gift Buying Guide

Book Browser Advanced Search Books Posted Today Member Book Reviews Award Winning Books NYT Best Sellers Amazon Best Sellers Most Traveled Copies Club Wish List

Discussion Forums Book Lists

Club Lists My Book Lists My Watched Lists Create a List

Blog Donations

School Donation Program In Memory of... Military Donation Program Friends of PBS

Box-O-Books Maps The Eclectic Pen Fun Stuff

20 Questions Sudoku Bookmark Creator

Top 100

Requests Posts Swappers Referrers Reviewers

Pulse of PBS Spread The Word

Invite Friends Bookmarks Facebook Page Facebook App More Ways...

Photo Gallery Recipes Club Tag Cloud Member Testimonials

Help Center submenu

How To Swap Books Browse Help Docs Ask the Librarian PBS Member Icons Live Help

Kiosk

PBS Market (New Books) Go Shopping Buy Credits Buy PBS Money Upgrade Membership Gift Certificates Transfer Credits

Need Help?

Search - The Works of William Wells Brown: Using His "Strong, Manly Voice" (Collected Black Writings)

The Works of William Wells Brown Using His Strong Manly Voice - Collected Black Writings
Author: William Wells Brown

Widely considered the first African-American novelist, William Wells Brown's (ca. 1814-1884) 1853 novel, Clotel, or the President's Daughter, chronicled the fate of the daughter of Thomas Jefferson and his black housekeeper. Yet, in his own day, Brown was perhaps more important as a rousing orator, scholar, and cultural critic. He escap... more »ed from slavery in 1834 and worked on Lake Erie steamboats in Buffalo, New York, helping slaves escape into Canada and lecturing for the New York Anti-Slavery Society. After moving to Boston in 1847, he began writing his autobiography, The Narrative of William W. Brown. By 1850, the book had appeared in four American and five British editions and rivaled the popularity of Frederick Douglass's Narrative written two years earlier. Throughout the late 1840s and 50s, Brown continued to lecture to further the antislavery cause and wrote prolifically. In addition to Clotel, he published the first drama written by an African American and the first military history of African Americans.

In his writings and speeches, William Wells Brown deliberately resists the tone of heroic resistance and eloquent outrage set by Frederick Douglass. Brown's rhetorical strategy involved telling stories of individuals and individual encounters in which the art of simple understatement and guileless self-presentation prevailed over cant, bullying, and hypocrisy. Brown's often humorous and deceptively artless tone appealed to politically active women who were claiming the moral high ground not only on questions of abolition but also on temperance and women's rights. Unlike Douglass, whose literary output can be described as a long conversation with the founding fathers and literary lions about freedom, liberty, and what it means to be an American, Brown emphasized-- with humor and a cosmopolitan gentility-- the concerns of middle class family life: education, parenting, and the damage that slavery was doing to American society.

This volume, with a foreword by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., will introduce readers to Brown's lesser-known, but no less powerful works, placed in the context of the era's debates on slavery, gender, morality, and the discursive limits put on anti-slavery advocacy. The collection presents Brown's anti-slavery works and the contemporary response to them in light of Brown's own attention to the role of women writers and political advocates in this period. Garrett's and Robbins's introduction to these texts emphasizes Brown's awareness and even use of women's voices in political discourse as a way of distinguishing himself from other black male voices of the time. The selection of texts also demonstrates Brown's willingness to use and recycle any texts at hand-- including his own-- in order to appeal to his immediate audience or readership. While making Brown's more obviously political work available to a wider audience, the book reclaims Brown as an important black influence in the American nineteenth century.

ISBN-13: 9780195309638
ISBN-10: 0195309634
Publication Date: 12/21/2006
Pages: 528
Edition: annotated edition
Rating:

0 stars, based on 0 rating

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Book Type: Hardcover
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

Genres:

History >> Americas >> General
Literature & Fiction >> History & Criticism >> Criticism & Theory >> General
Literature & Fiction >> World Literature >> United States >> Black & African American >> General
Literature & Fiction >> World Literature >> United States >> Classics >> General
Literature & Fiction >> History & Criticism >> Regional & Cultural >> United States >> General
Literature & Fiction >> World Literature >> United States >> Anthologies
Nonfiction >> Social Sciences >> Sociology >> General

Back to the Top ↑

Search - The Works of William Wells Brown: Using His "Strong, Manly Voice" (Collected Black Writings)

Loading...