Twelve Years A Slave

First published in 1853, Twelve Years a Slave is the narrative of Solomon Northup’s experience as a freeman sold into slavery, having spent twelve years in bondage before finally escaping. Northup’s memoir reveals unimaginable details, detailing the slave markets and horrors of life on a plantation from the perspective of a man who lived more than thirty years as a free person before being forcibly enslaved.

Written in the year after Northup was freed and published in the wake …