Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman

Sarah Hopkins BradfordProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 4.0
Word count
150K words
Chapters
16

Tags

English Originals Women's Biography SlaveryFate and FortuneHeroismPatriotismSpirit of ResistanceRoad to FreedomDocumentary NarrativeInterview RecordAntebellumFemale Perspective

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.Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman by Sarah H. BradfordAuthor: Bradford, Sarah H. (Sarah Hopkins), 1818-,Language: English, Class: E300: History: America: Revolution to the Civil War (1783-1861), Release Date: Aug 31, 2018

Editor's review

This biography, written by Sarah H. Bradford, a contemporary of Harriet Tubman, is a valuable first-hand narrative for understanding the American abolitionist movement and the Underground Railroad network. Writing as both eyewitness and interviewer, the author records Tubman's repeated risky journeys south to rescue enslaved people. The prose is plain yet vivid with a sense of immediacy, offering both the coherent narrative of a biography and the details and tone peculiar to oral history. As a public-domain e-book, it is short and plainly written, suitable as an introductory reading on nineteenth-century American history, Black women's history, and the abolitionist movement. Readers may wish to compare it with the broader historical background and consider how individual courage was transformed into action under institutional oppression. For Chinese readers, this book is also a sample for observing the early form of English-language biographical writing.

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Reading tips

  1. Begin with the preface and chapter titles to outline the timeline of Tubman's main actions, then move into the main text.
  2. While reading, consult a chronology of the nineteenth-century American abolitionist movement to understand the historical place of the events in the book.
  3. Take separate notes on the oral details in the book, and pay attention to the author's narrative tone as a contemporary witness.
  4. The book is short and can be read in two or three sessions; after each session, retell the key events in your own words.

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.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16

FAQ

What is the relationship between the author and Tubman? The author, Sarah H. Bradford, was a contemporary of Tubman. The book is based on interviews with and knowledge of Tubman herself and related people; it is an early biographical narrative, not a research work by a later scholar.
Can someone without a background in American history read this book? Yes, but it is advisable to first understand the basic background of the abolitionist movement and the Underground Railroad; otherwise some place names, figures, and institutional contexts in the book may be difficult to understand. The narrative itself is relatively plain and does not rely on complex theory.
Is this a Chinese or English edition? According to the information, this is an English public-domain e-book released by Project Gutenberg, in English. Chinese readers need some English reading ability, or should use Chinese background material to assist comprehension.
Is this book suitable for citation in historical research? It can serve as research material on early biography and oral tradition, but it lacks modern scholarly annotation and source criticism. For serious research, it should be used alongside other historical sources and scholarly works, not as the sole basis.

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About the author

Sarah Hopkins Bradford Author · American · 1818–1912

Sarah H. Bradford (1818–1912) was an American writer and historian, born in New York State and died in Rochester. She is best known for writing the biography of Harriet Tubman: she published Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman in 1869 and revised and expanded it in 1886 as Harriet, the Moses of Her People. These two biographies are among the earliest accounts of Tubman's life, preserving valuable firsthand narrative for later generations seeking to understand this key figure in the abolitionist movement and the Underground Railroad. Beyond biography, she also wrote children's literature, including Lewie Or, The Bended Twig, whose themes involve growth and moral education. Public information about her education and personal life is limited, and scholarly attention has focused mainly on the historical value and writing style of her Tubman biographies.