Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House (The Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers)

Keckley, Elizabeth

ISBN 10: 0195060849 / ISBN 13: 9780195060843

Published by Oxford University Press, 1989

About this Item

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House (The Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers)
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication Date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0195060849
• ISBN 13: 9780195060843
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

Part slave narrative, part memoir, and part sentimental fiction, Behind the Scenes depicts Elizabeth Keckley's years as a slave and subsequent four years in Abraham Lincoln's White House during the Civil War. As public drama privately experienced, Keckley's work presents Jefferson Davis and his wife, Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln, and even Stephen Douglas and "Mrs. Senator Douglas" in the foreground, with the war, and slavery as the issue that precipitated it, in the background. Through the eyes of this black woman--an ex-slave, seamstress, and dressmaker--we see a wide range of historical figures and events of the antebellum South, the Washington of the Civil War years, and the final stages of the war.

About the Author

James Olney is at Louisiana State University.