Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown

On 29th March, 1849, Henry Brown got into a box which was 3 feet long by 2 feet 8 inches deep by 2 feet wide and was posted to Philadelphia.

After 27 hours he emerged, not as a slave, but as a free man.

Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown is one of the most remarkable escapes from slavery ever recorded.

Brown records, with detail, his life as a slave and the tragic circumstances which led him to make his daring escape.

The whole narrative provides brilliant insight into the life of an African-American slave in the South of 1850s.

Brown also explains his own view of how the evils of slavery could be stopped without recourse to conflict and bloodshed.

Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown, written with the help of Charles Stearns, was first published in 1849. After he found freedom in the north he became a noted abolitionist speaker in the northeast United States. As a public figure and fugitive slave, Brown felt extremely endangered by passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, which increased pressure to capture escaped slaves. He moved to England and lived there for 25 years, touring with an anti-slavery panorama, becoming a magician and showman. He passed away in 1897.