Twelve Years a Slave

Twelve Years a Slave
Twelve Years a Slave is an 1853 memoir and slave narrative by American Solomon Northup as told to and edited by David Wilson. Northup was a freeborn African American living in New York and was tricked into going to Washington, D.C., where he was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the Deep South. He was in bondage for 12 years in Louisiana before he was able to secretly get information to friends and family in New York, and was reunited with them. In this story, Northup gave extensive accounts of the slave markets in Washington D.C. and New Orleans and the slave treatment on major cotton and sugar plantations in Louisiana. This book was published eight years before the Civil War and actually lent factual support to another best-selling novel about slavery Uncle Tom’s cabin. It was a bestseller in its own right but actually fell into obscurity for about 100 years until rediscovered by two Louisiana historians in the 1960s. It has been adapted to two film versions, one of which was the Oscar-winning 2013 film 12 Years a Slave.