Signet Book
Classic American Autobiographies
Key Metrics
- William L Andrews
- Signet Book
- Mass Market Paperbacks
- 9780451471444
- 6.9 X 4.3 X 1.3 inches
- 0.5 pounds
- Biography & Autobiography > Historical
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
A True History of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (1682), perhaps the first American bestseller, recounts this thirty-nine-year-old woman's harrowing months as the captive of Narragansett Indians.
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (1771-1789), the most famous of all American autobiographies, gives a lively portrait of a chandler's son who became a scientist, inventor, educator, diplomat, humorist--and a Founding Father of this land.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845), the gripping slave narrative that helped change the course of American history, reveals the true nature of the black experience in slavery.
Old Times on the Mississippi (1875), Mark Twain's unforgettable account of a riverboat pilot's life, established his signature style and shows us the metamorphosis of a man into a writer.
Four Autobiographical Narratives (1900-1902), published in the Atlantic Monthly by Zitkala-Sa (Red Bird), also known as Gertrude Bonnin, provide us with a voice too seldom heard: a Native American woman fighting for her culture in the white man's world.
Edited and with an Introduction by William L. Andrews
and an Afterword by Paul John Eakin
Author Bio
Dr. William L. Andrews is E. Maynard Adams Professor of English in UNC's College of Arts and Sciences. Professor Andrews has authored or edited more than 40 books on a wide range of African American literature and culture. He has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.
His first book, "The Literary Career of Charles W. Chesnutt" (1980), deals with a seminal figure in the development of African American and Southern American prose fiction.
"The Norton Anthology of African American Literature" (1997), "The Oxford Companion to African American Literature" (1997) and "The Literature of the American South: A Norton Anthology" (1997), are three big collaborative projects that he has co-edited.
Andrews is series editor of "North American Slave Narratives, Beginnings to 1920" (http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh), a complete digitized library of autobiographies and biographies of North American slaves and ex-slaves, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Ameritech and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He continues to study the historical linkages between white and black writers in the formation of American literature, African American literature and Southern literature.
Research Interests
Southern LiteratureAmerican Literature to 1900African American LiteratureSlaveryDigital Humanities
Education
Education
- B.A., 1968, Davidson College
- M.A., 1970, Ph.D., 1973, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Source: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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