18 books like The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson
Novels (Pudd'nhead Wilson / Those Extraordinary Twins)
The first work is the story of Roxana, a light-skinned slave who switches her baby with her master's.
Shares: Conjoined twins, Passing, Missouri, Impostors and imposture
Lay This Body Down
The John S. Williams plantation in Georgia was operated largely with the labor of slaves—and this was in 1921, 56 years after the Civil War. Williams was not alone in using “peons,” but his reaction to a federal investigation was almost unbelievable: he decided to destroy the evidence. Enlisting the aid of his trusted black farm boss, Clyde Manning, he began methodically killing his slaves. As…
Shares: Slaves, Slavery, Trials
Passing
First published to critical acclaim in 1929, Passing firmly established Nella Larsen's prominence among women writers of the Harlem Renaissance.
Irene Redfield, the novel's protagonist, is a woman with an enviable life. She and her husband, Brian, a prominent physician, share a comfortable Harlem town house with their sons. Her work arranging charity balls that gather Harlem's elite creates a…
Shares: Passing, Race Relations, Classics
The Girls
'I have never looked into my sister's eyes. I have never bathed alone. I have never stood in the grass at night and raised my arms to a beguiling moon. I've never used an aeroplane bathroom. Or worn a hat. Or been kissed like that...So many things I've never done, but oh, how I've been loved. And, if such things were to be, I'd live a thousand times as me, to be loved so exponentially' The girls,…
Shares: Conjoined twins, Twins
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
The true story of an individual's struggle for self-identity, self-preservation, and freedom, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl remains among the few extant slave narratives written by a woman. This autobiographical account chronicles the remarkable odyssey of Harriet Jacobs (1813–1897) whose dauntless spirit and faith carried her from a life of servitude and degradation in North Carolina to…
Shares: Slaves, Slavery
The life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, written in 1789, details its writer's life in slavery, his time spent serving on galleys, the eventual attainment of his own freedom and later success in business. Including a look at how slavery stood in West Africa, the book received favorable reviews and was one of the first slave narratives to be read widely.
Shares: Slaves, Slavery
The Vanishing Half
Brit Bennett’s chart topping novel, The Vanishing Half, is a story that tracks the lives of twin African American twin sisters who, after witnessing the murder of their father, run away at age 16. One sister begins passing as white and the other sister remains true to her identity. The Vanishing Half explores the intricacies of identity, family, and race in a provocative, but compassionate way.
Shares: Passing, Twins
Uncle Tom's Cabin
This unforgettable novel tells the story of Tom, a devoutly Christian slave who chooses not to escape bondage for fear of embarrassing his master. However, he is soon sold to a slave trader and sent down the Mississippi, where he must endure brutal treatment. This is a powerful tale of the extreme cruelties of slavery, as well as the price of loyalty and morality. When first published, it helped…
Shares: Slaves, Slavery
Kindred
Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him. Dana is drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more…
Shares: Slaves, Slavery
Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass
This book is an autobiographical account by runaway slave Frederick Douglass that chronicles his experiences with his owners and overseers and discusses how slavery affected both slaves and slaveholders.
Shares: Slaves, Slavery
The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies ...: In Two Volumes
The GENERAL HISTORICAL collection includes books from the British Library digitised by Microsoft. This varied collection includes material that gives readers a 19th century view of the world. Topics include health, education, economics, agriculture, environment, technology, culture, politics, labour and industry, mining, penal policy, and social order.
Shares: Slaves, Slavery
Twelve years a slave
Twelve Years a Slave is a harrowing memoir about one of the darkest periods in American history. It recounts how Solomon Northup, born a free man in New York, was lured to Washington, D.C., in 1841 with the promise of fast money, then drugged and beaten and sold into slavery. He spent the next twelve years of his life in captivity on a Louisiana cotton plantation.
Shares: Slaves, Slavery
The Freedom Maze
Thirteen-year-old Sophie isn’t happy about spending the summer of 1960 at her grandmother’s old house in the bayou. Bored and lonely, she can’t resist exploring the house’s maze, or making an impulsive wish for a fantasy-book adventure with herself as the heroine. What she gets instead is a real adventure: a trip back in time to 1860 and the race-haunted world of her family’s Louisiana sugar…
Shares: Slaves, Race Relations
East of Eden
Set in the rich farmland of the Salinas Valley, California, this powerful, often brutal novel, follows the interwined destinies of two families - the Trasks and the Hamiltons - whose generations hopelessly re-enact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel. Here Steinbeck created some of his most memorable characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of…
Shares: Classics
Lord of the Flies
Lord of the Flies is the 1954 debut novel of British author William Golding. The plot concerns a group of prepubescent British boys who are stranded on an uninhabited island and their disastrous attempts to govern themselves that lead to a descent into savagery. The novels themes include morality, leadership, and the tension between civility and chaos.
Shares: Classics
The Count of Monte Cristo
Thrown in prison for a crime he has not committed, Edmond Dantès is confined to the grim fortress of If. There he learns of a great hoard of treasure hidden on the Isle of Monte Cristo and he becomes determined not only to escape, but also to use the treasure to plot the destruction of the three men responsible for his incarceration.
Shares: Classics
The Master and Margarita
The Master and Margarita () is a novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, written in the Soviet Union between 1928 and 1940. A censored version, with several chapters cut by editors, was published posthumously in Moscow magazine in 1966–1967 by his widow Elena Bulgakova. The manuscript was first published as a book in 1967, in Paris, France. A samizdat version circulated that included parts cut out by official…
Shares: Classics
Les Misérables
Les Misérables (, ) is a French epic historical novel by Victor Hugo, first published on 31 March 1862, that is considered one of the greatest novels of the 19th century. Les Misérables has been popularized through numerous adaptations for film, television, and the stage, including a musical.
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