Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy, Late a Slave in the United States of America

Grandy, Moses, 1786？-Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 4.3

Word count: 73K words
Chapters: 8

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy, Late a Slave in the United States ofAuthor: Grandy, Moses, 1786?-,Language: English, Class: E300: History: America: Revolution to the Civil War (1783-1861), Release Date: Feb 13, 2005

Editor's review

This narrative is a typical text of the American slavery era: dictated by the person who lived it and compiled into a book by another, it is short in length yet dense in information. Grandy recounts in the first person his enslavement, his being sold from one owner to another, his saving of money to buy his freedom, and his eventual escape from bondage; he also records how his family was broken apart and the roles played by the law, the church, and the community at the time. Its value lies not in literary rhetoric but in its testimonial quality: readers can see how the system operated in the lives of specific people, and how the enslaved sought room for action under extreme constraints. The Project Gutenberg edition is a public-domain English e-book, easy to search and cite, and suitable as primary material for courses in American history, slavery studies, autobiography, and oral history. It should be read as a historical source rather than a novel; note the intervention of the compiler, the timing of the narrative, and the possibility of memory bias, and read it alongside relevant historical background for a more solid understanding.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Students and teachers studying American slavery and nineteenth-century American history
Readers of oral history, biography, and literature courses who need primary autobiographical material
General readers interested in the abolitionist movement and African American history
Advanced learners who wish to practice reading historical texts in the original English

Not a good fit for

Casual readers looking for tightly plotted fiction
Those with weak English reading skills who cannot yet read through nineteenth-century English texts
Readers expecting systematic theoretical analysis rather than personal narrative

Reading tips

Read a brief historical overview of American slavery before starting the text, so as not to mistake individual experience for the whole picture.
Mark passages concerning the law, buying and selling, and family separation as you read, and organize them into notes by theme afterward.
Pay attention to the relationship between the narrator and the compiler, and consider how oral material may change in the process of becoming a book.
Read alongside other slave narratives of the same kind and compare differences in narrative focus and modes of testimony.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Was this book written by Grandy himself?

According to available sources, this is a narrative dictated by Moses Grandy and compiled and published by another person, a common form of oral composition in nineteenth-century slave narratives. Readers should distinguish the narrated content from the compiler's editorial intervention and note the influence of the text's formation on its expression.

What historical background should one have before reading this book?

It is best to first understand the basic conditions of slavery in the United States from independence to the eve of the Civil War, including the slave trade, interstate resale, the situation of free Black people, and the abolitionist movement. With this background, the legal restrictions, family separations, and self-purchase experiences in the book will be easier to understand.

Is the Project Gutenberg edition suitable for citation?

This edition is a public-domain English electronic text, convenient for searching and excerpting, and suitable for course reading and preliminary research. For formal academic citation, verify edition information and page numbers and consult authoritative print or scholarly editions, rather than relying solely on the formatting differences of an electronic text.

Is this book long, and is it suitable for classroom use?

Slave narratives of this kind are usually short and clearly structured, making them suitable for assignment in sections as primary material in a course. Students can be asked to read through it before class, with class discussion centered on testimonial quality, narrative perspective, and the limitations of historical sources; it works better with background reading.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Grandy, Moses, 1786？- Author · American · 1786

Moses Grandy (Grandy, Moses, 1786?-) was an African American author of a slave narrative. His birth year is only inferred to be around 1786, and the year of his death is unknown. His single surviving work, Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy, Late a Slave in the United States of America, tells in the first person of his experience as a slave and of his struggle for freedom. Such slave narratives were an important genre in the nineteenth-century American abolitionist movement, typically presenting, through the eyes of those who lived it, the everyday reality of slavery and individual resistance. Because public information is limited, the details of Grandy's life, as well as the publication history and circulation of his narrative, are difficult to establish with certainty; his account is nonetheless regarded as a primary source for the study of African American history and the slave narrative tradition.