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Virginia Slave Narratives

Virginia Slave Narratives

Applewood Books

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The view that slavery could best be described by those who had themselves experienced it personally has found expression in several thousand commentaries, autobiographies, narratives, and interviews with those who "endured." Although most of these accounts appeared before the Civil War, more than one-third are the result of the ambitious efforts of the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) to interview surviving ex-slaves during the 1930s. The result of these efforts was the Slave Narrative Collection—a group of autobiographical accounts of former slaves that today stands as one of the most enduring and noteworthy achievements of the WPA.

Compiled in seventeen states during the years 1936-38, the collection consists of more than two thousand interviews with former slaves, most of them first-person accounts of slave life and the respondents' own reactions to bondage. The interviews afforded aged ex-slaves an unparalleled opportunity to give their personal accounts of life under the "peculiar institution," to describe in their own words what it felt like to be a slave in the United States.

This paperback edition of all of the Virginia narratives is reprinted in facsimile from the typewritten pages of the interviewers, just as they were originally typed. Compiled by the Federal Writers' Project; originally published in 1936.

  • Product Type: Book, Trade Paperback
  • 72 pages
  • Published in 2006
  • Shipping Dimensions: 9.3 × 7.5 × 0.3 inches  (23.6 × 19.1 × 0.8 cm)
  • Shipping Weight: 0.4 lb (6.4 oz; 181 g)
  • SKU010001382 | 9781557090256

In these collections:

All Products | Applewood Books | Black History Month | Books & Media | Gifts Under $25 | Juneteenth | Made in USA | Myers House | Thomas Jefferson, Architect
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About the Publisher

Applewood Books

Founded in Carlisle, Massachusetts in 1976 by Phil Zuckerman, Applewood Books specializes in publishing "books for the Cultural Traveler," high-quality, American-manufactured books that help tell the stories of America—its places, its people, and its history.

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