Josephine Brown was the youngest child of the abolitionist and author William Wells Brown (1814-1862) and his wife Elizabeth. Her father escaped the bond of enslavement to live his life as a free man.
As a young woman, Josephine also kept quite busy as an assistant to her father’s extensive antislavery activities. In 1855, she returned to the United States after a sojourn to France. Upon her return to the United States, she completed the biography of her father she had begun during her time in France: Biography of an American Bondman, by His Daughter.
As Josephine Brown explained in her preface to the book, she was moved to finish the book when she discovered that her father’s autobiography Narrative of William W. Brown: A Fugitive Slave (1847) was out of print.
Description
Josephine Brown was the youngest child of the abolitionist and author William Wells Brown (1814-1862) and his wife Elizabeth. Her father escaped the bond of enslavement to live his life as a free man.
As a young woman, Josephine also kept quite busy as an assistant to her father’s extensive antislavery activities. In 1855, she returned to the United States after a sojourn to France. Upon her return to the United States, she completed the biography of her father she had begun during her time in France: Biography of an American Bondman, by His Daughter.
As Josephine Brown explained in her preface to the book, she was moved to finish the book when she discovered that her father’s autobiography Narrative of William W. Brown: A Fugitive Slave (1847) was out of print.