I Was Born a Slave, Volume 1

May 15, 1999
With this compact set, editor Taylor, director of Lawrence Hill's "Library of Black America" series, offers an invaluable anthology of the dominant genre of early African American literature--the ex-slave autobiography. Taking as a title the five-word opening frequent in the genre, Taylor presents 20 unabridged first editions, supplying typographical corrections and annotations to persons, places, and terms. He introduces each selection with a brief head note providing an interpretive context as well as details on the author's life and the publication's history. His selections capture nine of the ten most referenced ex-slave narratives in U.S. history and offer two previously un-reprinted works. Scholars may contrast Taylor's introduction to the volumes with the more literary overview in Henry Louis Gates Jr. and William L. Andrews's Pioneers of the Black Atlantic: Five Slave Narratives from the Enlightenment, 1772-1815 (LJ 12/98). But nothing detracts from Taylor's care and skill in presenting this sampling of authentic American voices. No serious collection on U.S. history or literature, and certainly no collection on African Americans, can be without these two volumes. Highly recommended.--Thomas J. Davis, Arizona State Univ., Tempe

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