Description
Fourth edition of Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman by Austin Steward.
Octavo, xii, [13]-360pp. Publisher’s original brown cloth, title in gilt on spine, decorative border stamped in blind on covers. Stated “fourth edition” on title page. Complete with engraved frontispiece portrait and four illustrated plates. Occasional toning and spotting, wear along edges, solid text block.
Austin Steward (1793-1869) was an African American abolitionist and author of Twenty-Two Years a Slave, first published in 1857. Steward was born a slave, but escaped around the age of 21. He settled in Rochester, NY, then later moved to Wilberforce Colony in Canada to aid newly freed slaves. His memoirs found a receptive audience in the North before the onset of the Civil War.
