American Literature

American Literature

1800 - 1900

William Wells Brown (November 6, 1814 - November 6, 1884) was a prominent abolitionist lecturer, novelist, playwright, and historian. His first novel, entitled Clotel, or, The President's Daughter: a Narrative of Slave Life in the United States, is credited as being the first novel written by an African American. However, because the novel was published in England, the book was not the first African-American novel published in the United States. This credit goes to one of two disputed books: Harriet Wilson's Our Nig (1859), brought to light by Henry Louis Gates Jr. in 1982; or Julia ...