This volume, devoted to Solomon Northup's 1853 oral memoir (put into writing by David Wilson), will explore that book from numerous perspectives, including those of race, class, history, biography, psychology, and sociology, to mention just a few.

Northup's narrative will be examined in terms of its reception in its own day and later, its rediscovery by scholars, its adaptations for television and film, its relevance to the history of American slavery, and its effectiveness as a piece of writing. It will be compared and contrasted with other works concerning slavery, such as Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (to which it bears intriguing similarities), and it will be set in the context of the American abolitionist movement and later movements for civil rights in the United States.

The Critical Insights series distills the best of both classic and current literary criticism of the world's most studies literature. Edited and written by some of academia's most distinguished literary scholars, Critical Insights: Twelve Years a Slave provides authoritative, in-depth scholarship that students and researchers will rely on for years. This volume is destined to become a valuable purchase for all.