| Edition |
First edition. |
| Description |
lxx, 270 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages [251]-270). |
| Summary |
"The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict is a rare and original autobiography, a first-person account of a young black man's life as an indentured servant, a juvenile delinquent, and a prisoner in New York State in the mid-nineteenth century. Austin Reed was born a free man near Rochester, NY in the 1820s. As a young adult, he was sent to a juvenile reform school in Manhattan, where he learned to read and write. In the decades that followed, Reed would be repeatedly incarcerated for theft in a state prison in Auburn. It was there that he began to write this memoir, which explores America's first reformatory and first industrial prison from an inmate's point of view, and the great cruelties and kindnesses he experienced in those places, excavating patterns of racial segregation, exploitation, and bondage extending beyond the boundaries of the slaveholding South, into free New York. A work of uncommon, haunting beauty, this is a major historical document that transforms our understanding of nineteenth-century history and literature"-- Provided by publisher. |
| Subject |
Reed, Austin, 1823?-
|
|
African American prisoners -- New York (State) -- Biography.
|
|
African Americans -- Biography.
|
|
Reformatories -- New York (State) -- History -- 19th century.
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Prisons -- New York (State) -- History -- 19th century.
|
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United States -- Social conditions -- 19th century.
|
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United States -- Race relations -- History -- 19th century.
|
|
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs.
|
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SOCIAL SCIENCE / Ethnic Studies / African American Studies.
|
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HISTORY / United States / 19th Century.
|
| Genre/Form |
Autobiographies.
|
| Added Author |
Smith, Caleb, 1977- editor, writer of introduction.
|
| ISBN |
9780812997095 (hardcover) |
|
0812997093 (hardcover) |
|
9780812997101 (electronic book) |
|
