UI Press | William L. Andrews | To Tell a Free Story: The First Century of Afro-American Autobiography, 1760-1865

To Tell a Free Story

The First Century of Afro-American Autobiography, 1760-1865

To Tell A Free Story traces in unprecedented detail the history of black America's most innovative literary tradition -- the autobiography -- from its beginnings to the end of the slavery era.

"This book is superb in so many ways that I really don't know where to begin my praises. It will be the book-of-the-year in Afro-American literary studies."--Robert B. Stepto, author of From Behind the Veil: A Study of Afro-American Narrative

"Andrews treats early Afro-American autobiography in greater detail, with more theoretical acumen, and with a finer literary tact, sensitivity, and intelligence than any other single critic. It is a first-rate work which, among a host of other virtues, is distinguished by it's stylistic clarity and grace."--James Olney, author of Metaphors of the Self: The Meaning of Autobiography

"A forceful and remarkable volume. [To Tell A Free Story] looks at a century of black-American autobiography in a fashion and with a sensitivity no one before Andrews has revealed; it is enriched by scholarly intelligence and integrity, and it should stand as a landmark in both American literary studies and black studies."--Russell C. Brignano, American Literature

"To Tell a Free Story imaginatively combines literary criticism, anthropological theory, and history to provide a detailed, nuanced, and persuasive reading of Afro-American autobiography from its origins in the eighteenth century through emancipation."--Julius S. Scott, Journal of Southern History

William L. Andrews, a native Virginian, is professor of English at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He is the author of The Literary Career of Charles W. Chesnutt, and the editor of Literary Romanticism in America, Critical Essays on W.E. B. DuBois, Sisters of the Spirit: Three Black Women's Autobiographies of the Nineteenth Century, and a new edition of My Bondage and My Freedom (forthcoming from Illinois in 1987).