Twelve Years a Slave: Narrative of Solomon Northup, A Citizen of New York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853, From a Common Plantation Near the Red River, in Louisiana

Auburn, Buffalo, Cincinnati: Derby and Miller; Derby, Orton and Mulligan; Henry W. Derby, 1853. First edition. First edition. (First printing with no mention of additional printings in thousands at top of title page.) [4, ads], xvi, (17)-336pp. Bound in publisher's brown cloth, spine lettered in gilt, boards stamped in blind with original yellow coated endpapers. Illustrated with seven full page illustrations including the frontispiece of the author. Housed in a leather backed custom clamshell case. About Very Good with cloth worn along edges, exposed boards along bottom edge, rubbed spine lettering. Contents significantly foxed and printing quality of (truncated) pages varies, as is typical. A presentable copy of the sought-after first printing in its original binding with no discernible sophistications; quite rare thus.

A ex-slave memoir by an African American man who had been a free landowner in New York but during an 1841 trip to the nation's capitol was drugged, kidnapped and sold into slavery. He lived for twelve years in bondage in the Red River region of Louisiana. Upon publication Frederick Douglass hailed his story as a work whose "truth is far greater than fiction... It chills the blood." Also the basis of an award-winning 2013 film. (Inventory #: 140944182)