Author Description

A nice edition with 16 illustrations and photographs. John Brown was born in slavery and made his way North to escape slavery, working in various places. He sailed to England in 1850, as the new Fugitive Slave Law passed in the United States increased enforcement against fugitive slaves even in free states. He did not want to be taken back into slavery. In London, Brown worked as a carpenter. There he contacted the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society to tell his story. In 1855 he dictated a memoir to the society's secretary, Louis Alexis Chamerovzow. It was published in London as Slave Life in Georgia: A Narrative of the Life, Sufferings, and Escape of John Brown, a Fugitive Slave, Now in England. Brown's is one of numerous "slave narratives" published before and after the Civil War.