William Wells Brown's novel Clotel shows us just how far the United States was from truly representing freedom in the years before the Civil War. The novel uses

Clotelle; or the Colored Heroine by William Wells Brown (1814 - 1884) was originally printed by the Press of Geo. C Rand and Avery in 1867. This reproduction is

William Wells Brown's Clotel is often considered the first novel by an African-American. When the book was published, Brown himself was legally the property of