Clotel or The President’s Daughter

The first novel by an African-American, this dramatic tale revolves around the fate of a child fathered by Thomas Jefferson with one of his slaves. Although born into slavery, author William Wells Brown escaped bondage to become a prominent reformer and historian. His emotionally powerful depiction of slavery and racial conflict in the antebellum South resounds with the immediacy and honesty of his own experiences. Brown weaves a variety of contemporary sources — sermons, lectures, political pamphlets, and newspaper advertisements — into this innovative work, which appears here in an unabridged republication of the 1853 first edition.