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In The Margins Of Twelve Years A Slave, Mary Niall Mitchell
In The Margins Of Twelve Years A Slave, Mary Niall Mitchell
Mary Niall Mitchell
The McCoy family’s original 1853 edition of Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years a Slave has at least five authors. There was Northup himself, of course, a free black man who provided the details of his illegal enslavement in the Deep South, and his white editor and amanuensis, David O. Wilson. Beyond the two principals, at least three others made their own additions to the book. Some in pen, but most in pencil. Sorting out who wrote what, and when they wrote it, is mostly a guessing game, but a telling one even still. Northup’s account — which any reader knows was …