Twelve Years a Slave

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Twelve Years a Slave (1853) is a memoir and slave narrative by Solomon Northup, as told to and edited by David Wilson. Northup, a black man who was born free in New York, details his kidnapping in Washington, D.C. and subsequent sale into slavery. After having been kept in bondage for 12 years in Louisiana by various masters, Northup was able to write to friends and family in New York, who were in turn able to secure his release. Northup’s account provides extensive details on the slave markets in Washington, D.C. and New Orleans and describes at length cotton and sugar cultivation on major plantations in Louisiana. The work was published by Derby & Miller of Auburn, New York, soon after Harriet Beecher Stowe’s best-selling novel about slavery, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), to which it lent factual support. Northup’s book, dedicated to Stowe, sold 30,000 copies, making it a bestseller in its own right.