William L. Andrews is E. Maynard Adams Professor of English in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of The Literary Career of Charles W. Chesnutt,, editor of Life of John Thompson, a Fugitive Slave, and coeditor of Slave Narratives from the Library of America.

• CoverTitleCopyrightContentsPrefaceChapter 1. The First Century of Afro-American Autobiography: Notes toward a Definition of a GenreChapter 2. Voices of the First Fifty Years, 1760-1810Chapter 3. Experiments in Two Modes, 1810-40Chapter 4. The Performance of Slave Narrative in the 1840sChapter 5. The Uses of Marginality, 1850-65Chapter 6. Culmination of a Century: The Autobiographies of J.D. Green, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet JacobsConclusion. "Free at Last": From Discourse to Dialogue in the Novelized AutobiographyNotesAnnotated Bibliography of Afro-American Autobiography, 1760-1865Annotated Bibliography of Afro-American Biography, 1760-1865IndexBack Cover

"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"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