Who is clotel

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William worked as a house servant and field slave and was hired out as an assistant to a tavern keeper, a printer, and the slave trader James Walker, who voyaged extensively, traveling to and from the New Orleans slave market on the Mississippi River.

After at least two failed attempts, Brown did escape slavery on New Year's Day, Aided in his flight from Ohio into Canada by the Quaker Wells Brown, William adopted the man's names out of gratitude and admiration.

For the next nine years, Brown worked aboard a Lake Erie steamboat while concurrently acting as an Underground Railroad conductor in Buffalo, New York. Embarking on a career as a lecturing agent for the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society in , Brown eventually moved to Boston in , where he began his impressive literary career.

In that same year, he wrote and published his autobiography, the Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave. Written by Himself.

With its four American and five British editions appearing before , Brown's Narrative , second in popularity only to Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave , brought him international celebrity. Brown later spent several years abroad, attending a peace conference in Paris lecturing for England's antislavery movement. As a professional writer, Brown produced a range of works, including the first African American play, The Escape; or, a Leap for Freedom , two volumes of African American history, three additional versions of Clotel , and a final autobiography, My Southern Home; or, the South and Its People First published in London, Clotel; or, The President's Daughter subsequently underwent three title changes and substantial revisions for later editions, all released during the s.

Interestingly, Brown opens the novel with a shortened version of his narrative entitled, "Narrative of the Life and Escape of William Wells Brown"; however, he presents this account using third-person narration.

In his distinct style, Brown readily blends elements from this narrative as well as various anecdotes, poetry, folk songs and ditties, vignettes of slave life, and even newspaper accounts into the novel. In promoting an abolitionist agenda, he also emphasizes the deleterious effects of slavery on the family. As might have been expected, the day of sale brought an unusual large number together to compete for the property to be sold. Farmers who make a business of raising slaves for the market were there; slave-traders and speculators were also numerously represented; … The less valuable slaves were first placed upon the auction block, one after another, and sold to the highest bidder.

Husbands and wives were separated with a degree of indifference that is unknown in any other relation of life, except that of slavery. Brothers and sisters were torn from each other; and mothers saw their children leave them for the last time on this earth.

It was late in the day, when the greatest number of persons were thought to be present, that Currer and her daughters were brought forward to the place of sale. Currer was first ordered to ascend the auction stand… The slave mother was sold to a trader. Althesa, the youngest… was sold to the same trader for one thousand dollars.

Clotel was the last, and, as was expected, commanded a higher price than any that had been offered for sale that day. The appearance of Clotel on the auction block created a deep sensation amongst the crowd.