William Wells Brown: An African American Life

by Ezra Greenspan

Overview

A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist 'Biography'

A groundbreaking biography of the most pioneering and accomplished African-American writer of the nineteenth century.

Born into slavery in Kentucky, raised on the Western frontier on the farm adjacent to Daniel Boone’s, “rented” out in adolescence to a succession of steamboat captains on the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, the young man known as “Sandy” reinvented himself as “William Wells” Brown after escaping to freedom. He lifted himself out of illiteracy and soon became an innovative, widely admired, and hugely popular speaker on antislavery circuits (both American and British) and went on to write the earliest African American works in a plethora of genres: travelogue, novel (the now canonized Clotel), printed play, and history. He also practiced medicine, ran for office, and campaigned for black uplift, temperance, and civil rights.

Ezra Greenspan’s masterful work, elegantly written and rigorously researched, sets Brown’s life in the richly rendered context of his times, creating a fascinating portrait of an inventive writer who dared to challenge the racial orthodoxies and explore the racial complexities of nineteenth-century America.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393242003
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	09/23/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	448
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Ezra Greenspan is the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Professor of English at Southern Methodist University and the editor of William Wells Brown: A Reader. He lives in Dallas, Texas.

Table of Contents

Abbreviations vii

Introduction 1

Part 1 From Life to Letters

1 Antecedents in Black and White 11

2 Down the River, Up the River 43

3 Sweet Freedom 94

4 The Road to Reform 116

5 Narrative of a Life, Life of a Narrative 146

Part 2 England

6 London, the Biggest Stage 203

7 "Almost an Englishman" 268

Part 3 Civil War

8 "Upon an Experimental Voyage" 317

9 The Black Man at War 367

Part 4 "The World Does Move"

10 "Help Me to Find My People" 417

11 My Southern Home, Revisited 455

Epilogue-Afterlife 510

Acknowledgments 517

Notes 523

Text Credits 577

Index 579

Editorial Reviews

…a highly sophisticated biography that appreciates Brown's many and varied forms of self-expression…Ezra Greenspan's biography offers the definitive treatment of an extraordinary 19th-century American. Its depth of field keeps Brown in focus as a singular individual while capturing those around him with clarity…this biography makes a tremendous contribution to our understanding of one fascinating American and the networks he operated in so variously.

The New York Times Book Review - Nell Irvin Painter

06/23/2014
Greenspan, an English professor at Southern Methodist University, reconsiders the life of William Wells Brown, a once-prominent but widely forgotten activist whose “eventful life of journeys” makes for a rich and essential addition to the annals of African-American history. Brown was born into slavery and escaped to the North before emigrating to London, where he established a highly productive writing and lecturing practice of “nonstop activism.” He continued this practice upon returning to the U.S. at the dawn of the Civil War, and despite receiving criticism for being a “self-serving black bourgeois,” he was considered second only to Frederick Douglass (with whom he disputed publicly) as a respected African-American lecturer. A literary and cultural historian, Greenspan’s scholarly interest in print media is evident in the emphasis placed on understanding Brown’s rise from slavery as a “quest for personal identity... attained through literacy.” In analyzing Brown’s written oeuvre, critiquing his “proclivity for rewriting the past” in works of purported nonfiction, and expanding and clarifying the historic facts, Greenspan shows how Brown’s life was a mirror of the “quick-change artists” that populate his writing. Greenspan’s detailed study of this life of constant growth should win Brown his proper place in American history. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

"William Wells Brown not only was the first African American novelist; he was a master at bringing his contemporaries, the heroic black men and women of the Civil War generation, into full view with his pen. Now, at last, biographer Ezra Greenspan has done the same for Brown. The result is an “experimental voyage,” beautifully written and exhaustively researched, that enthralls the reader while illuminating the improvisational genius of one of the nation’s most influential fugitive slaves. In reconstructing the fullness of his story, long obscured by the Jim Crow era that followed, William Wells Brown: An African American Life, ensures that Brown’s rightful place in the constellation of leading black men and women of letters will remain fixed for future generations.”"

Henry Louis Gates

"Ezra Greenspan’s painstaking historical research and artful insights of literary analysis have returned William Wells Brown to his rightful place…The very soul of this talented and complex man is laid bare by Greenspan’s rich contextualization of Brown’s abolitionist success, his remarkably prolific writing, and his legal statelessness in America yet cosmopolitan status as world citizen."

Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham

"Rich and fascinating…Ezra Greenspan has accomplished a remarkable feat of innovative research and has lucidly brought Brown, the self-taught former slave, to life as a person and as a writer who repeatedly reinvented himself in several genres while producing a brilliant critique of America’s dilemma with race."

David W. Blight

"In his day, Brown rivaled Frederick Douglass as a prominent black abolitionist and exceeded him as an author of important histories and biographies of African Americans. Ezra Greenspan’s definitive biography rescues Brown from undeserved obscurity."

James M. McPherson James M. McPherson

"An informative and often moving account."

San Francisco Chronicle - Glenn C. Altschuler

"A scholarly tour de force. Drawing from an astonishing range of primary materials, Greenspan renders Brown’s life in a gripping, elegant narrative that opens up many new vistas on Brown and his world."

David S. Reynolds

"A compelling life of one of the most remarkable men of the nineteenth century—a boon to our understanding of African American and American culture."

Arnold Rampersad

"A fascinating read and an excellent piece of historical detective work."

Annette Gordon Reed

"In his day, Brown rivaled Frederick Douglass as a prominent black abolitionist and exceeded him as an author of important histories and biographies of African Americans. Ezra Greenspan’s definitive biography rescues Brown from undeserved obscurity."

James M. McPherson

11/01/2014
Abolitionist, doctor, and novelist of Clotel, William Wells Brown was originally known as Sandy and grew up enslaved on a farm next to Daniel Boone's before his escape and meteoric rise.

Library Journal

2014-06-01
A scholar fills in the gaps in the life of a former slave who became one of the most famous African-Americans of the 19thcentury.Greenspan (English/Southern Methodist Univ.; editor:William Wells Brown: A Reader, 2008, etc.) mined the archives to discover how William Wells Brown (a name adopted long after his birth) rose from a nondescript slave probably born in 1814 to becomea man of letters, not to mention a medical doctor, before his death in 1884. During the later decades of his life, Brown was the equal of Frederick Douglass as an influential African-American polymath. Like Douglass, Brown crusaded for civil rights. Even after he had won esteem and could live comfortably,he would travel alone to the Deep South, knowing he would be harassed and possibly even murdered. Greenspan is no hagiographer. He understands, for example,that Brown's written works (most famously the novelClotel) are far from canonical. Butthe author is openly admiring, and rightly so, of Brown's daring escape from slavery,self-education, powerful public speaking on the anti-slavery circuit, creative approach to the civil rights campaign and efforts to win public office through candidacy in legitimate elections. During the 19thcentury, the lives of slaves yielded almost no reliable documentation, so Greenspan immersed himself in pre–Civil War chronicles of slave culture to calculate the most likely circumstances of Brown's life. The author’s informed speculation offers a window not only into Brown's suffering and rise, but also the travails (and occasional triumphs) of countless slaves who tried to use their freedom wisely. Greenspan ably navigates Brown’s life and demonstrates how he became a problem to both his slave masters and to any other bigots who could not fathom such intelligence in a lowly slave from Kentucky.A solid biography of a deserving subject.

Kirkus Reviews