As William Wells Brown's first published work and his most widely read autobiography, the 1847 Narrative occupies an important place within not only his oeuvre but also the broader African American literary tradition. Brown would draw directly from the text in many of his later works, among them Clotel, The Escape, and My Southern Home. Preceding this account of Brown's life, however, are two letters and a preface. The first letter William Wells Brown himself writes in thanks to "Wells Brown, of Ohio" (iii), while the second, written by Edmund Quincy, remarks upon the variety of Brown's experiences and praises the manuscript's "simplicity and calmness" (vi). Following J. C. Hathaway's Preface, largely an appeal on behalf of the abolitionist cause, Brown opens his narrative noting that his father was the white George Higgins, a relative of his master, and that his enslaved mother, Elizabeth, had given birth to seven children, each with a different father. In doing so, Brown immediately draws attention to the plight of mixed-race individuals as well as the tenuous nature of slave families.
