Summary
Summary of Twelve Years a Slave
Who it’s for
Readers drawn to firsthand history, personal accounts of survival, and precise descriptions of American slavery will find this memoir deeply compelling.
What this book is
Twelve Years a Slave is Solomon Northup’s memoir of being kidnapped as a free Black man in New York and sold into slavery in Louisiana. Readers return to it for its precise account of plantation life and its forceful testimony to how slavery destroys families, rewards cruelty, and suppresses the truth.
In this summary
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Key point 1 of 5
Solomon Northup lives in New York with his wife, Anne, and their children. He works, plays the violin, and moves through life as a free Black citizen. In 1841, two men offer him paid work as a musician and persuade him to travel with them to Washington, D.C. There, after becoming ill, he wakes in chains. When he insists that he is free, his captors beat him.
That’s 1 of 5 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Who’s who
- Solomon Northup
- A free Black father and violinist, Solomon is Anne’s husband and is kidnapped into slavery in Louisiana.
- Anne Northup
- Anne is Solomon’s wife and the mother of their children, sharing his family life in New York.
- William Ford
- Ford is an enslaver whose kindness toward Solomon coexists with his willingness to hold people as property.
- Edwin Epps
- Epps is a violent enslaver who controls Solomon’s labor and subjects Patsey to sexual abuse.
- Patsey
- Patsey is an enslaved woman whose exceptional cotton picking offers no protection from Epps’s abuse or his wife’s hostility.
- Eliza
- Eliza is an enslaved mother whose separation from her children reveals the family suffering Solomon witnesses.
- John Tibeats
- Tibeats is an enslaver whose conflict with Solomon exposes the danger surrounding an enslaved person’s self-defense.
About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 85,000 words
- Reading timeAbout 5 h 40 min
- Listening time9 h 25 min
- FormatseBook, large-print eBook, audiobook, 15-minute summary
- LanguagesEnglish and 13 other languages