Clotel: The President’s Daughter, First Novel published by African American, Williams Well Brown
Below in this page, we will be exploring on yet another history book first published by an African American just as we told the story of Bars Fight Poem, which was the First Great Poetry by African American, Lucy Terry Prince.
So below read on to find out more story on the first novel, written by lecturer Williams Well Brown to be published by an African American, in 1853.
The great Novel, Clotel: The President’s Daughter was written amid the time that unconfirmed rumors were that Thomas Jefferson had fathered children with one of his slaves and this novel narrated the forgotten slave life in the United States at that time.
So it basically narrates on the Clotel and her sisters who were fictional slave daughters of Thomas Jefferson, begining with the auction of his mistress, called Currer, and their two daughters, Clotel and Althesa.
In true, Clotel is a very sensation novel as it gives details on how life were for the people of color in the past, showing how slave traded and deal are and how black daughter can a slave in her on father’s house.
Let me tell you a bit of the story. The novel portrays a man from Virginia who bought Clotel and falls in love with her which hardly happens at the time as slaves were easily raped by owner but the Virginian man showed her love and promise her marriage but only for him to then sells her off.
Clotel shows the wickedness of man towards the people of color and this happen to Clotel as she was sold off but later on escaped the dealer and returns to Virginia for her daughter.
She disguised as a white man to rescue her daughter, whose name was Mary and like I said, she was a slave in her father’s house (Virginian man).
More about the author, Williams Well Brown
William Wells Brown, was born in 1814 and was 70 years before his death in 1884. William was born on a plantation near Lexington, Kentucky and the father was a white man and an enslaved woman who lived principally in and around St. Louis, Missouri.
William grew up seeing the suffering and unbearable conditions of the black people and until his 20 years, he was also in these conditions in his life and he lived as a slave by working as a house servant and field slave and was hired out as an assistant to a tavern keeper, a printer, and the slave trader James Walker, who voyaged extensively, traveling to and from the New Orleans slave market on the Mississippi River.
He suffered and worked all kind of slave jobs 2 decades of his life before several escape attempt to run yield gain and on New Year’s Day, in 1834 he finally escaped and this was aided by Quarter Wells Brown.
He took a flight Ohio into Canada with Quekers help and this made William adoptimg the man’s names out of gratitude and admiration and has his full name as William Wells Brown.
There in Canada, William worked aboard a Lake Erie steamboat for 9 years while also acting as an Underground Railroad conductor in Buffalo, New York.
In 1843, history has it that William worked as a lecture agent for the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society and in 1847, he moved to Boston and there he started a career in literature.
The same year he moved to Boston in 1847, he wrote and published his autobiography, the Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave and before 1850, the book has four American and 5 British versions published.
His second work, a narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, brought him international celebrity and this was how he stepped up and began to go abroad and attend a peace conference in Paris lecturing for England’s antislavery movement.
His other work were like; Three Years in Europe; or, Places I have Seen and People I Have Met (1852) this two narrative was whole he’s in England and the next year 1853 in London, he wrote and published Clotel; The President’s Daughter.
Concluding in this post, you should know that in the summer of 1834, he met and married Elizabeth Spooner who was free black woman and they had three daughters but two survived as one died shortly after birth.
The great Playwriter, historian and novelist, William Wells Brown died on November 6, 1884, in Chelsea, Massachusetts, at the age of 70.
Proudly written by OGE EBUBE KINGSLEY, COPYRIGHT OGE LALA BUSINESS CONCEPT 2023.
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Clotel the president daughter Williams Well Brown
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