Clotel, or, The President's Daughter: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Clotel, or, The President's Daughter, credited to William Wells Brown, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of Clotel, or, The President's Daughter, by William Wells Brown. Clotel; or, The President's Daughter is a novel by William Wells Brown (1815-84), a fugitive from slavery and abolitionist and was published in London, England in December 1853. It is often considered the first African-American novel. This novel focuses on the difficult lives of mulattoes in America and the "degraded and immoral condition of the relation of master and slave in the USA" (Brown). It is about the tragic lives of Currer, Althesea, and Clotel. In the novel, Currer is the former mulatto mistress of President Thomas Jefferson who together have two daughters, Althesea and Clotel. Because she was beautiful and the mistress of Jefferson, Currer and her daughters lived a confortable life, this changed when her master passes away. In the end, Currer and Althesea are auctioned to the notorious slave trader, Dick Walker. Clotel is bought by her lover Horatio Green. The separation of these three women is just the beginning of the injustices they face. It gained notoriety amid the unconfirmed rumors regarding Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings. Brown was still considered someone else's legal property within the borders of the United States at the time of its publication. It is considered to be the first novel written by an African American. Brown used the injustices of slavery to demonstrate the destructive effects it had on the African American family, most significantly the so-called tragic mulatto. Brown had escaped from slavery in Kentucky while still in his youth, and became active on the anti-slavery circuit. (Summary from Wikipedia)

Recording facts

• Recording title: Clotel, or, The President's Daughter
• Author credits: William Wells Brown
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 29
• Listed recording duration: 5:31:10

Catalogue topics

• historical fiction
• slavery
• black

Opening tracks: first 24 of 29

1. 00 - Memoir of the Author — 3:23
2. 01 - The Negro Sale — 17:30
3. 02 - Going to the South — 13:53
4. 03 - The Negro Chase — 10:03
5. 04 - The Quadroon's Home — 6:02
6. 05 - The Slave Master — 6:45
7. 06 - The Religious Teacher — 25:45
8. 07 - The Poor Whites, South — 10:34
9. 08 - The Separation — 9:05
10. 09 - The Man of Honor — 3:16
11. 10 - The Young Christian — 13:01
12. 11 - The Parson Poet — 6:16
13. 12 - A Night in the Parson's Kitchen — 10:11
14. 13 - A Slave Hunt — 11:14
15. 14 - A Free Woman Reduced to Slavery — 6:45
16. 15 - Today a Mistress,Tomorrow a Slave — 5:55
17. 16 - Death of the Parson — 9:20
18. 17 - Retaliation — 5:12
19. 18 - The Liberator — 13:37
20. 19 - Escape of Clotel — 25:40
21. 20 - A True Democrat — 8:45
22. 21 - The Christian's Death — 13:26
23. 22 - A Ride in a Stage Coach — 21:19
24. 23 - Truth Stranger Than Fiction — 12:02

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Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.