Twelve Years a Slave is the memoir of Solomon Northup, a free black man who was kidnapped and sold into slavery. Published in 1853, the same year in which he was liberated, it covers his twelve years in servitude.
Northup recounts his life beginning in New York, establishing his origin and his status as a free man residing in the North with his family. He then shares the details surrounding his kidnapping and experiences within the slave market, and the subsequent years of captivity and enslavement he endures until he steps onto free soil again twelve years later. Through his story of plight, Northup describes the daily interactions between him, other slaves, and the various masters he works under, as well as specific and extensive knowledge of agricultural practices and southern customs – shedding more light on slavery than any textbook can.
The memoir is dedicated to Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose fictional narrative, Uncle Tom's Cabin, was published only one year earlier. Critics have noticed Northup's story bears many similarities to Stowe's, such as the condemnation of the legal system itself rather than individual slave owners, as well as the shared setting of the novels. The publication of Twelve Years a Slave helped affirm the fictional, albeit accurate, words of Stowe regarding the institution of slavery.
Northup enlisted David Wilson, an antislavery editor, as his amanuensis. Scholars have debated how much of the work was written by Wilson, but most seem to agree that Northup provided the facts and did indeed play a large role in its writing.
Twelve Years a Slave was a bestseller, with 25,000 copies sold in its first two years. Subsequent editions were published as well, but the work fell into obscurity until 1930, when a young woman named Sue Eakin found a copy of the narrative in a plantation house and then for sale in a local bookshop. Intrigued, especially when the bookseller claimed it was pure fiction, she pursued everything she could find about Northup, eventually corroborating his narrative in numerous ways and bringing it back into the public domain. While not as widely read as the Narrative of Frederick Douglass or Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, it provides an outlook critical to the national debate leading to the Civil War as well as an understanding of a brutal yet significant aspect of American history.
Notably, British director Steve McQueen adapted the work into an Academy-Award-winning film in 2014.
