Twelve Years A Slave: Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New-York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853, from a Cotton Plantation near the Red River, in Louisiana.

Auburn: Derby & Miller. 1853. First edition, eighth thousand. Octavo, with portrait frontispiece, contemporary cloth, 7.5 x 5.25 inches (19 x 13.3 cm.).  Inside cover with early bookseller label"From Adams' Wholesale Bookstore, Warren, O[hio]." A worn copy with scattered foxing, mostly light and in the margins after the first approximately 30 pages where heaviest, but apparent throughout to some degree, one leaf with 2 small tears to edges, binding shaken, with several gatherings split or splitting from the block, corners bumped with losses, spine with losses at extremities and elsewhere.  With ownership signatures from the Vradenburg family of Bristol Ohio: the first, in pencil on the ffe recto "W.L. Vradenberg / Bristol / Ohio," presumed to be that of William Vradenberg (b. 1811); the ffe verso with full page first name only signature, in pencil, "Solomon," presumed to be that of Solomon Vradenberg, who in the Civil War mustered as Pvt. in 1863, transferred to the Navy the following year where he served on the U.S.S. Choctaw, William G. Anderson and Pampero; and lastly on blank recto of portrait frontispiece and again on the rear free endpage  "Newton Vranderberg's Book / North Bristol / Ohio," this being presumably the Newton Vrandberg recorded in the 1899 Atlas and Directory of Trumbull County, Ohio as residing in North Bristol. A good copy of this important slave narrative, the basis for the 2013 Academy Award winning movie of the same title. (18520)

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Book

History & Historiography

Civil War

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