he slave narrative is a literary form which grew out of the written accounts of enslaved Africans in Britain and its colonies, including the later United States, Canada and Caribbean nations. Some six thousand former slaves from North America and the Caribbean gave accounts of their lives during the 18th and 19th centuries, with about 150 narratives published as separate books or pamphlets. In the 1930s in the United States, during the Great Depression, more than 2300 additional oral histories on life during slavery were collected by writers sponsored and published by the Works Progress Administration [1] (WPA) of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration. Most of the 26 audio-recorded interviews are held by the Library of Congress.[2]

Some of the earliest memoirs of captivity known in England and the British Isles were written by white Europeans and later Americans captured and sometimes enslaved in North Africa, usually by Barbary pirates. These were part of a broad category of "captivity narratives" by English-speaking Europeans. Beginning in the 18th century, these included accounts by colonists and American settlers in North America and the United States who were captured and held by Native Americans. Several well-known captivity narratives were published before the American Revolution, and they often followed forms established with the narratives of captivity in North Africa. Later North American accounts were by Americans captured by western tribes during 19th-century migrations.

For the Europeans and Americans, the division between captivity as slaves and as prisoners of war was not always clear. A broader name for the genre is "captivity literature". Given the problem of international contemporary slavery in the 20th and 21st centuries, additional slave narratives are being written and published.
Slave narratives by African slaves from North America were first published in England in the 18th century. They soon became the main form of African-American literature in the 19th century. Slave narratives were publicized by abolitionists, who sometimes participated as editors, or writers if slaves were not literate. During the first half of the 19th century, the controversy over slavery in the United States led to impassioned literature on both sides of the issue.

To present the reality of slavery, a number of former slaves, such as Harriet Tubman, Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass, published accounts of their enslavement and their escapes to freedom. Lucy Delaney wrote an account that included the freedom suit waged by her mother in Missouri for their freedom. Eventually some 6,000 former slaves from North America and the Caribbean wrote accounts of their lives, with about 150 of these published as separate books or pamphlets.

Because of the participation of abolitionist editors, influential historians, such as Ulrich B. Phillips in 1929, suggested that, as a class, "their authenticity was doubtful." With increased emphasis on using the slaves' own accounts and the research of broader classes of information, since the late 20th century historians have more often validated the accounts of slaves about their own experiences.[3]

The slave narratives can be broadly categorized into three distinct forms: tales of religious redemption, tales to inspire the abolitionist struggle, and tales of progress. The tales written to inspire the abolitionist struggle are the most famous because they tend to have a strong autobiographical motif, such as in Frederick Douglass' autobiographies and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs (1861).

Prior to the American Civil War, some authors wrote fictional accounts of slavery to create support for abolitionism. The prime example is Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) by Harriet Beecher Stowe. The success of her novel and the social tensions of the time brought a response by white southern writers, such as William Gilmore Simms and Mary Eastman, who published what were called anti-Tom novels. Both kinds of novels were bestsellers in the 1850s.
From the 1770s to the 1820s, the slave narratives generally gave an account of a spiritual journey leading to Christian redemption. The authors usually characterized themselves as Africans rather than slaves, as most were born in Africa.

Examples include:

A Narrative of the Most Remarkable Particulars in the Life of James Albert "Ukawsaw Gronniosaw", an African Prince, by Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, Bath, England, 1772
The Interesting Narrative and the life of "Olaudah Equiano" or Gustavus Vassa, the African, by Olaudah Equiano, London, 1789
A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, a Native of Africa: But Resident Above Sixty Years in the United State of America, by Venture Smith, New London, 1798
The Blind African Slave, Or Memoirs of Boyrereau Brinch, Nicknamed Jeffrey Brace, by Jeffrey Brace as told to Benjamin F. Prentiss, Esq., St. Albans, Vermont, 1810;[4] edited and with an introduction by Kari J. Winter, Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004, ISBN 0-299-20140-6)[5]
From the mid-1820s, writers consciously chose the autobiographical form to generate enthusiasms for the abolitionist struggle. Some writers adopted literary techniques, including the use of fictionalized dialogue. Between 1835 and 1865 more than 80 such narratives were published. Recurrent features include: slave auctions, the break-up of families, and frequently two accounts of escapes, one of which is successful. As this was the period of the forced migration of an estimated one million slaves from the Upper South to the Deep South through the slave trade, the experiences of auctions and break-up of families were common to many.

Examples include:

Life of William Grimes, the Runaway Slave, New York, 1825
The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave, London, 1831
Slavery in the United States: A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Charles Ball, A Black Man, Lewistown, 1836
A Narrative of Adventures and Escape of Moses Roper from American Slavery, London, 1837
A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Boston, 1845
Narratives of the Sufferings of Lewis and Milton Clarke, Sons of a Soldier of the Revolution, during a Captivity of More than Twenty Years among the Slaveholders of Kentucky, Boston, 1846
Narrative of William Wells Brown, a Fugitive Slave, Boston, 1847
The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself (1849), Boston, 1849
Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, New York, 1849
The Fugitive Blacksmith, or Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington, London, 1849
Twelve Years a Slave, Narrative of Solomon Northup, Auburn, and Buffalo, New York and London, 1853
Slave Life in Georgia: A Narrative of the Life, Sufferings and Escape of John Brown, London, 1855 ISBN 0-8369-8865-5
The Life of John Thompson, A Fugitive Slave, Worcester, Massachusetts, 1855
The Kidnapped and the Ransomed, Being the Personal Recollections of Peter Still and his Wife "Vina," after Forty Years of Slavery, by Kate E. R. Pickard, New York, 1856
Running a thousand Miles for Freedom, or the Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery, London, 1860
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, by Harriet Jacobs, Boston, 1861
The Experience of a Slave in South Carolina by John Andrew Jackson, London, 1862
Narrative of the Life of J. D. Green, a Runaway Slave from Kentucky, Huddersfield, 1864
Mary Reynolds (ex-slave) Louisiana, 1827
ollowing the defeat of the slave states of the Confederate South, the authors had less need to convey the evils of slavery. Some gave a sentimental account of plantation life and ended with the narrator adjusting to the new life of freedom. The emphasis of writers shifted conceptually toward a recounting of individual and racial progress rather than securing freedom. Frederick Douglass's second biography is, for example, more sentimental about his early boyhood in slavery (which was generally a less oppressive time than the working years of a slave).[6] Slaves interviewed as part of the Federal Writers' Project during the Great Depression noted the relative advantages of slavery in terms of better medical care and food supplies, regular festivities, lack of financial concerns, a "double sense of belonging," being taken care of, less gambling, drunkenness and violence, greater stability, care in their old age, and the advantages of rural life over the urban environment into which many ex-slaves moved.[7] Economically, the slave economy with efficient division of labor was highly productive; its abolition, extensive property damage from the American Civil War, and over-reliance on agriculture contributed to economic weakness in the South for at least 20 years.

Examples include:

The Life of James Mars, A Slave Born and Sold in Connecticut, Hartford 1864
From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or, Struggles for Freedom, by Lucy Delaney, 1892 - this is unique as the only first-person account of a successful freedom suit.
The Freedman's Story by William Parker, published in The Atlantic Monthly, 1866
Thirty Years a Slave: From Bondage to Freedom by Louis Hughes, Milwaukee, 1897
Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington, Garden City, New York, 1901
During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the New Deal Works Projects Administration (WPA) employed writers and researchers from the Federal Writers' Project to interview and document the stories of African Americans who were former slaves. Most had been children when the Thirteenth Amendment was passed. Produced between 1936 and 1938, the narratives recount the experiences of more than 2,300 former slaves. Some interviews were recorded; 23 of 26 known audio recordings are held by the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress.[2][8] The last interview of a former slave was with Fountain Hughes, then 101, in Baltimore, Maryland in 1949.[2] He was a grandson of a slave owned by President Thomas Jefferson at Monticello.