Travels of W. W. Brown

Brown was a runaway slave turned abolitionist and advocate for the rights of African Americans in the mode of Frederick Douglass. The current volume is a compendium of his two best-known literary works . The first, published in 1847p. 3 , deals with the author's life in slavery and his escape to freedom in the North. As an account of the South's peculiar institution and of one man's triumph over it, it equals Douglass's own narrative; so it is surprising that it is not better known, especially because Brown's life parallels his in so many ways. The second work is an entertaining tale of the author's lengthy sojourn in Europe in the early 1850s, where he was sent by abolitionists to lobby support for their cause by being a living example, dispelling Southern propaganda about the innate inferiority of blacks. While in Europe, Brown freely rubs elbows with Victor Hugo and members of the British aristocracy and literati. Editor Jefferson, associate professor of history at Haverford College, has omitted several chapters of American Fugitive that he believes would be less interesting to modern readers. He provides a useful introduction and liberally footnotes the text of both works. (Sept.)