Harriet Beecher Stowe 
Slave Narrative Six Pack 

The slave narrative is a literary sub-genre that emerged from the written accounts of enslaved Africans in Great Britain and its colonies, including the later United States, Canada, and Caribbean nations. Some of the earliest memoirs of captivity known in England and the British Isles were written by white Europeans and later Americans captured and sometimes enslaved in North Africa, usually by Barbary pirates. These were part of a broad category of ’captivity narratives’ by English-speaking Europeans. 



For the Europeans and Americans, the division between captivity as slaves and as prisoners of war was not always clear. A broader name for these works is ’captivity literature.’ 




Slave Narrative Six Pack  presents six of the most famous examples of the genre: 




Uncle Tom’s Cabin  by Harriet Beecher Stowe 


Twelve Years a Slave  by Solomon Northup 


Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839  by Frances Anne Kemble 


The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African  by Olaudah Equiano 


The Life of William H. Furness  by William Still 


Captain Canot; or, Twenty years of an African slaver: being an account of his career and adventures on the coast, in the interior, on shipboard, and in the West Indies  by Brantz Mayer 



Includes image gallery and link to free audio recording of 
Uncle Tom’s Cabin.