Access the full text.
Sign up today, get DeepDyve free for 14 days.
References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.
William Wells Brown: An African American Life. By Ezra Greenspan. (New York: W. W. Norton, 2014. Pp. 614. Cloth, $35.00.) Perhaps William Wells Brown's time has finally come. The man who published his own account of slavery two years after the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass appeared in 1845 remained in his formidable predecessor's shadow for the remainder of his life--and that shadow only lengthened after death. As if to compensate for his initial belatedness, Brown became a literary trailblazer--author of "the earliest African American travelogue (Three Years in Europe, 1852)," "the earliest African American novel (the now canonized Clotel, 1853)," "the earliest printed African American play (The Escape, 1858)," "a pioneering history of African Americans (The Black Man, 1863)," and "the first history of African American military service in the Civil War (The Negro in the American Rebellion, 1867)" (4). Brown's composite history of the African diaspora, The Rising Son (1873), may not have been a "black first" along the same lines, but My Southern Home (1880), Brown's unsettling contribution to the plantation school of literature, certainly was. Brown coupled relentless literary innovation with multimedia performance artistry, accompanying his lectures with songs from his Anti-Slavery
The Journal of the Civil War Era – University of North Carolina Press
Published: Nov 21, 2015
Read and print from thousands of top scholarly journals.
Already have an account? Log in
Bookmark this article. You can see your Bookmarks on your DeepDyve Library.
To save an article, log in first, or sign up for a DeepDyve account if you don’t already have one.
Copy and paste the desired citation format or use the link below to download a file formatted for EndNote
Access the full text.
Sign up today, get DeepDyve free for 14 days.
All DeepDyve websites use cookies to improve your online experience. They were placed on your computer when you launched this website. You can change your cookie settings through your browser.