Twelve Years a Slave

Originally published in 1853, Twelve Years a Slave is a haunting portrayal of stolen freedom and brutal life on the sugar and cotton plantations of the Deep South.

Landowner, carpenter, and skilled violinist Solomon Northup is living comfortably with his wife and children in Saratoga, New York, when two circus promoters offer him work as a traveling musician. They then drug and kidnap him, and Northup is sold into slavery and transported to Louisiana, spending twelve grueling years in captivity, at the whim of several ruthless slave owners.

With its gripping and horrendous accounts of slave life in the Deep South, Solomon Northup’s seminal memoir is now available as an elegantly designed clothbound edition with an elastic closure and a new introduction.