The Known World: A Novel
EDWARD P. JONES
2003

INTRODUCTION

The Known World: A Novel (2003) is the Pulitzer Prize-winning debut novel by Edward P. Jones. The book was praised by critics for its provocative depiction of the complexities of slavery in the United States and helped establish Jones's reputation as an author of note. Jones was inspired while attending College of the Holy Cross when he learned that a few free blacks owned slaves in pre-Civil War America. The author spent about ten years developing the story idea and reading books about slavery before writing the novel in late 2001 and early 2002.

While The Known World includes the truth about black slave owners and captures the essence of the era, its people, and its tensions, Jones did not rely on any of his research in writing the novel. He created the whole fictional world of Manchester County, Virginia, including specific historical facts, academic studies mentioned in passing, and other "evidence." The novel weaves stories about interconnected whites, both rich and poor, free blacks, free black slave-owners, and enslaved blacks. The plot revolves around the life and death of Henry Townsend, a free black man who was once a slave and became a slave owner in adulthood.

While Jones emphasizes how destructive slavery is for both slave and owner, he also highlights the importance of inner strength and familial relationships. Many critics note the effectiveness of his straightforward language and detached tone in describing these ideas in the novel. Jones told Robert Fleming of Publishers Weekly, "It was my goal to be objective, to not put a lot of emotion into this, to show all in a matter-of-fact manner…. In a case like this, you don't raise your voice, you just state your case and that is more than enough."

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Edward Paul Jones was born in 1950 in Washington, D.C., where he was raised by his illiterate mother, Jeanette S. M. Jones. His father left the family when Jones was about four years old, and his mother supported Jones and his younger siblings by working as a hotel maid and kitchen worker. The family moved often, at least eighteen times before Jones's high school graduation.

Jones loved to read comic books as a child, and he became excited about longer fiction after reading his first novel at the age of thirteen. He was also a good student from an early age. After graduating from Cardozo High School, Jones entered College of the Holy Cross, a choice influenced by a friendship he had with a Jesuit priest, Joseph Owens, in high school. A scholarship student, Jones studied English and began writing fiction as a sophomore.

After earning his undergraduate degree in 1972, Jones returned to Washington to care for his sick mother. He took a job writing news releases for the National Park Service. Jones drifted a bit in life and was even briefly homeless after the death of his mother in 1975. Jones's professional and personal life improved in 1976 when he had a short story published in Essence and landed a job at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Jones became part of a writing workshop while working at the AAAS for three years. After reading some of Jones's work, novelist John Casey convinced Jones to enter the MFA creative writing program at the University of Virginia. Jones graduated in 1981 and taught there for a year afterward. Though he later taught at other colleges, Jones needed a steady income and took a job at the Arlington, Virginia-based journal Tax Notes in 1983. There, he summarized news stories and pieces from editorial pages and worked as a proofreader.

While working at Tax Notes, Jones wrote fiction in his free time, only writing when he felt he had a story to tell. He published a number of short stories in major periodicals. Many of his stories were about poverty and hardships in the Shaw neighborhood in Washington, D.C., where Jones grew up. Jones published some of these stories in his first book Lost in the City (1992). The collection won the PEN/Hemingway Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Two years later, Jones was given a Lannan Foundation Grant in 1994 for his short fiction.

In the early 1990s, Jones began working on what would become The Known World: A Novel. Based on what he learned in college about black slave owners in pre-Civil War America, Jones spent ten years forming the narrative in his head. Taking a five-week vacation from Tax Notes at the end of 2001, Jones finally began writing down his story. He finished the first draft in two-and-a-half months. During his vacation, Jones learned that his position at the journal was one of many being eliminated in early 2002. Jones continued to write and revise his manuscript, living off his severance and vacation pay before collecting unemployment.

Jones published The Known World in 2003, the same year he received a second Lannan Foundation Grant. The novel garnered much critical acclaim and won many awards, including the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the 2004 National Books Critics Circle Prize for fiction, and the 2005 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. In 2004, Jones also was given a $500,000 MacArthur Fellowship. As of 2006, Jones lives in Washington, D.C., where he focuses on fiction writing full time. He is the author of the forthcoming short story collection All Aunt Hagar's Children: Stories, planned for publication in 2006.

PLOT SUMMARY

Chapter 1: Liaison. The Warmth of Family. Stormy Weather

The Known World: A Novel opens on the July day in 1855 when Henry Townsend, a thirty-one-year-old African American plantation and slave owner, dies unexpectedly. Moses, Henry's first slave, works as the plantation's overseer. After that day's work in the fields is done, it is raining and Moses walks into a forest where he strips naked, lies down on the ground, and falls asleep. Alice, another of Henry's slaves, comes upon Moses in her usual nocturnal roamings and watches him. A few hours later, when Moses returns to the lane where the slave quarters are, he admonishes another slave, Elias, for being up carving a doll out of wood for his daughter.

Caldonia is Henry's childless widow. She is also black and somewhat educated but, unlike Henry, was born free. Caldonia did her best to comfort Henry the last days before he died. Henry's parents also visited as they only did when he was ill. Fern Elston, an educated free black woman who works as a teacher, also stayed on to help her two former pupils and friends. Caldonia, Fern, and Loretta, Caldonia's personal maid, were in the room when Henry died.

Henry's father, Augustus Townsend, was once owned by William Robbins. Because of Augustus's impressive skills as a wood carver, he was able to buy himself out of slavery. Robbins allowed Augustus to hire himself out in exchange for part of Augustus's earnings. After Augustus bought his freedom, he built a house on land he rented and eventually bought from a poor white man. He successfully petitioned the state to be allowed to stay in Virginia, as the law said that freed slaves could be re-enslaved within a year if they remained there. Augustus continued to work as a wood carver for hire, and within three years, he was able to buy his wife Mildred from Robbins.

Augustus and Mildred's son Henry, who was nine when his mother was freed, remained Robbins's slave for a few more years. Henry's parents came to visit him most every Sunday, while Mildred's friend Rita took care of him during the week. Because Henry was intelligent, Robbins wanted a higher price for his freedom. Henry became Robbins's groom and proved extremely reliable. Robbins came to feel affection toward the boy.

Though Robbins was married to a white woman with whom he had a daughter, he spent much of his time with his former slave Philomena, whom he loved more than his wife, and their two children, Louis and Dora. Henry often waited for Robbins to return from visits to the home his master had built among white people for Philomena and her children. With Caldonia and her brother Calvin, Louis and Dora received their education from Fern.

Chapter 2: The Wedding Present. Dinner First, Then Breakfast. Prayers Before an Offering

In the same community, Deputy Sheriff John Skiffington married Winifred Patterson, the Philadelphia-bred niece of sheriff Gilly Patterson. Among the attendees at the wedding were Skiffington's cousin Counsel Skiffington, a wealthy man from North Carolina, and his wife Belle. As a wedding present, Counsel gave them a slave child named Minerva. The gift was troubling to the couple as neither wanted to own slaves. They did not want to sell her so they kept her and treated her not as a piece of property, but something like a daughter.

Because Robbins believed that the sheriff, Gilly Patterson, was not doing his job, he resigned and Skiffington became sheriff about two years after his wedding. Skiffington did not hire a deputy sheriff, but instead expanded the role of slave patrollers. He divided Manchester County into three parts and had groups of three patrollers monitor each area every night.

Sheriff Patterson was finally forced out because of an incident surrounding Rita, who escaped and was not found. When Augustus and Mildred bought Henry out of slavery from Robbins, Rita became desperate when they came to pick him up. At Henry's and Rita's insistence, Augustus and Mildred took her with them. Augustus and Mildred were scared they would be caught with a runaway slave, but they smuggled her out by sending her to New York City inside a box of walking sticks Augustus carved for a client.

Chapter 3: A Death in the Family. Where God Stands. Ten Thousand Combs

Moving back to Henry's death, Moses and his family are informed of their master's demise by Loretta, Caldonia's personal maid. Though they worry about their futures, Loretta wants all the slaves to be informed of Henry's death. Moses tells them all but Elias and his family, as Loretta got to him first.

Moses then leads all the slaves to the house where Caldonia, her family, and Fern are waiting. Caldonia speaks briefly before going back inside. Mildred and Augustus then move among the slaves, offering their own condolences because Caldonia does not plan to set them free. After Robbins arrives with Dora and Louis, Calvin tells the slaves not to work that day. The work that has to be done that day, such as milking cows, collecting eggs, and feeding animals, is completed. Henry's grave is also dug by Calvin, Louis, Moses, Elias, and Stamford.

That evening, Fern and Caldonia visit the lane and some of the slave cabins. Alice also wanders off the property and is chanting, "Master dead master dead master be dead" when three patrollers, Harvey Travis, Barnum Kinsey, and a new third man come across her. When she returns to the plantation, she encounters Elias, who is still working on the doll for his daughter.

Elias had once tried to run away from Henry's place, but he was caught by Robbins and returned to Henry. Henry admonished Elias in front of the other slaves, then kept him in chains in the barn. Henry decided to punish Elias by having part of his ear cut off by Oden Peoples. Though they initially hated each other, Elias and another slave named Celeste eventually married, and they began raising Luke, a young slave who helped take care of Elias's injury but who soon died.

Chapter 4: Curiosities South of the Border. String Tricks in a Doomed City. A Child Departs from the Way. The Education of Henry Townsend

As the chapter opens, it is 1881. Anderson Frazier, a Canadian pamphleteer who writes about the United States, interviews Fern about Henry. While Henry was still Robbins's slave, he learned how to make shoes and boots. After he was free, Henry returned to Robbins's place to make shoes and boots for him and his white guests. Robbins promoted his shoemaking enterprise and gave him financial advice. Henry would spend weeks working at the Robbins's plantation, a situation that made his parents uncomfortable.

Robbins also loved Philomena so much that he freed her six months after their relationship began. He bought her a house as well, and purchased her mother, brother, and friend Sophie, though the latter two ran away. Because of Sophie's stories, Philomena was obsessed with moving to Richmond, and she ran away there several times, taking Dora and Louis with her the second time. Henry accompanied Robbins when he went to retrieve them. Robbins beat her when he found her.

Robbins sold Henry his first piece of land, near his own property. Henry soon bought his first slave, Moses, from Robbins as well. Moses helped Henry build Henry's house. One day, Robbins stopped by to find Moses and Henry wrestling in the partially completed home and rebuked Henry for his actions, telling him, "the law expects you to know what is master and what is slave." Henry took physical action to put Moses in his place, and he told Moses to keep building the house alone.

That same day, Robbins arranged for Fern to teach Henry, although Fern was initially reluctant to take him on as a student. Through Fern, Henry met and married Caldonia and befriended her brother Calvin.

When Henry left Moses, he went to the home of his parents, who became upset by the news that their son had bought another man. Augustus was especially outraged, and he hit his son with one of his walking sticks. Injured, Henry went to Robbins's house where Robbins gave him advice. Moving forward to Henry's burial, Mildred speaks at the funeral because the minister is late.

Chapter 5: The Business Up in Arlington. A Cow Borrows a Life from a Cat. The Known World

One spring weekend in 1844, John and Winifred Skiffington visit Clara, Winifred's widowed couosin, who is worried that her long-time slave Ralph is poisoning her. Clara learned that another family's slave had been putting ground glass in their food. Skiffington and Winifred try to assure her that Ralph would not do that, but Clara makes her own food from that point forward.

While visiting with Clara, Skiffington also deals with a conflict between two of his patrollers, Harvey Travis and Clarence Wilford. Clarence bought a cow that was not giving milk from Harvey for very little money. When the cow suddenly produced milk again, Harvey felt cheated and wanted the cow back. Skiffington settles the matter between them as fairly as he can.

As Skiffington and Winifred return home, the couple talk about moving to Pennsylvania in a few years. Minerva would come if she so desired. The next day, Skiffington has to deal with his prisoner, Jean Broussard, who is accused of murdering his slave trade partner, Alm Jorgensen. While Skiffington questions Broussard, Robbins and Henry come in to complain that Harvey hit Henry when Henry, a free twenty-year-old, was on his way to visit his parents. Broussard is in possession of two slaves, Moses and Bessie, and sells Moses to Robbins while he is still in jail. Broussard is eventually convicted of murder and put to death.

Chapter 6: A Frozen Cow and a Frozen Dog. A Cabin in the Sky. The Taste of Freedom

Two days after Henry's burial, Caldonia still struggles with the effects of his death while her mother, Maude, reminds her, "The legacy is your future, Caldonia, and that can't wait." Maude does not want her daughter to sell the slaves and land. Caldonia has no intention of doing so.

There is tension between them because Maude is worried that Caldonia will be like her father, who bought himself out of slavery and later wanted to free all of his own slaves. Unbeknownst to her children, Maude had killed her husband so he could not free his slaves. There is also friction between Maude and Calvin, though she tells him that she will leave him her economic legacy.

Though it is a Sunday, Moses has the slaves working in the fields. Calvin tells Caldonia, who tells them not to work. As Calvin relays the message, he reflects on his forbidden love for Louis and his desire to move to New York.

Among the Townsend slaves, the woman-chasing slave Stamford looks for a new female companion after Gloria rejects him. He pursues Cassandra, but she continues to reject his advances. Sleeping alone, he is troubled because he cannot easily remember his parents' names. A few days later, Stamford tries to win Gloria back, but she is already with another man, Clement. Stamford and Clement get into a fist-fight, with Clement getting the best of him.

Moses informs Caldonia of Stamford's injuries from the fight. She, Loretta, and Delphie look after Stamford. When he is well, Stamford tells Delphie they should be together, but she rejects his advances. The situation with Stamford compels Caldonia to focus more on running the plantation. She decides not to punish Clement, though Moses imposes some Sunday labor on Stamford and Clement himself. Caldonia begins meeting with Moses each day to hear reports about the day's work and slave-related news. She soon wants to know about Henry and what happened before she knew him.

A few weeks after Henry's death, three patrollers—Harvey Travis, Oden Peoples, and Barnum Kinsey—come upon Augustus as he is returning home from delivering a chest and walking stick two counties away. Though they all know Augustus, they demand his free papers. Travis eats Augustus's papers. He and Oden sell Augustus to a slave speculator named Darcy for $50. Barnum believes this action is wrong, but he does not stop the sale. Travis burns Augustus's wagon.

Chapter 7: Job. Mongrels. Parting Shots

After three bad years with limited profits, Counsel Skifington had about four-and-a-half years of prosperity before a smallpox epidemic killed his wife, four children, and all his slaves. Only Counsel and some of his livestock survived. Because he refused to bury anyone, he left the bodies in buildings on his property and burned them all to the ground.

Counsel left North Carolina and went to Georgia. He began feeling sick, but he found work on a farm until he fell ill again. When he was better, he stole money and a horse from the house in the middle of the night and left. Counsel went west, stopping in Louisiana. There, he stayed in the barn of the Jinkins family and had sex with Hiram Jinkins's wife, Meg.

Continuing through Texas, Counsel had another strange encounter with a group of people of many races—black, white, Chinese, and Mexican—in a forest near Georgetown. He is invited to join them, but he declines, determined to continue on his own. Reaching a clearing and crossing a creek, Counsel has to cut through a thick patch of vegetation. When his horse refuses to enter the vegetation, he shoots and kills the animal. Counsel has a breakdown and begins to speak to God: "Counsel went on talking to God, and the buzzards came down and joined the flies, all of them feasting on the horse and ignoring the man who still had some life in him."

Chapter 8: Namesakes. Scheherazade. Waiting for the End of the World

After Henry dies, Fern stays with Caldonia for five weeks, a few days longer than Caldonia's mother and brother. On her way home, Fern encounters a black man named Jebediah Dickinson who claims her husband Ramsey owes him a $500 gambling debt. Fern refuses to deal with her husband's debt, though Jebediah lingers near her home for many days.

Within a few weeks, the patroller Oden brings Jebediah to the county jail, though Skiffington does not want him there. Investigating Jebediah's free papers, Skiffington learns that he is really a slave who belongs to a Reverend Mann. Able to read and write, Jebediah has forged his own papers. When Ramsey returns home, he claims not to know Jebediah. Still thinking about Jebediah, Fern learns of Reverend Mann from Skiffington, then buys Jebediah herself.

Chained in Fern's barn, Jebediah insists that Ramsey owes him $500. He also tells her that Ramsey has been unfaithful to her in Richmond. Instead of freeing Jebediah as she originally planned, Fern uses him as a laborer. While he does well for a while, he roams freely at night on a forged pass. Jebediah continues to insist that he is owed $500. After Jebediah tells Fern, "If you was my woman you wouldn't be sleepin in that bed alone every night," she flogs him. Jebediah recovers and focuses on work, but his right foot has to be amputated after he steps on a rusty nail. Two weeks later, Fern sets him free. Jebediah moves to Washington, D.C.

At the Townsend plantation, Moses continues to meet with Caldonia daily to tell her about events among the slaves and more stories about Henry. One day, Moses's wife, Priscilla, makes a comment about his cleaning up to go up to the house, believing that he is trying to impress Loretta. Moses hits her.

Moses returns to the woods where he lies naked and alone again. This time, he realizes that Alice has followed him. Moses tells her to go home and intends to "strike her down," but he cannot find her. He tries to follow Alice the next night but loses her. Moses shares his concerns about Alice with Caldonia, but she will not let him lock her up. Following Alice again, he realizes that Alice is just pretending to be crazy.

Soon after, Moses kisses Caldonia after she becomes upset about Henry. Two meetings later, Caldonia allows him to put her in his lap while telling her about Henry.

Chapter 9: States of Decay. A Modest Proposal. Why Georgians Are Smarter

Augustus is still being held with other blacks taken by Darcy, the slave trader, and his slave Stennis. While Darcy unloads some of his captives, Augustus acts like he is hard of hearing and unintelligent when Darcy tries to sell him in South Carolina.

Back in Manchester County, Skiffington is shocked by the return of his cousin Counsel, whom he does not recognize at first. Everyone believed that Counsel was dead. Skiffington offers Counsel a job as his deputy sheriff. Soon after, Mildred reports to the new deputy sheriff that Augustus is missing.

At the Townsend plantation, Caldonia has had sex with Moses, but she feels some guilt the next morning. The following night, Caldonia dismisses Moses after his report, and the night after that, she has guests, including Fern, and does not want a report at all. A few days later, Caldonia and Moses make love again, though Caldonia wonders if the act is against the law. Moses begins to believe that Caldonia will free him and perhaps marry him.

Moses decides to get rid of his wife, son, and Alice by arranging for them to run away together. He tells Alice that they will leave on Saturday night; Alice takes charge as they do so. Though Moses reports that they are missing the next day, Caldonia is not concerned. Skiffington is informed on Monday, and he begins investigating the escape himself. He is suspicious of Moses and believes that he murdered the three.

A few days later, Barnum informs Skiffington that Harvey and Oden sold Augustus into slavery several weeks earlier. Barnum feels guilty for not saying anything sooner. Skiffington begins investigating this incident as well. He visits Mildred about the matter, and he learns that she told Counsel many days before. Counsel never told him. After Skiffington returns home, he confronts Counsel, Harvey, and Oden about Augustus. Skiffington writes to state authorities for guidance about Augustus's disappearance. In Georgia, Darcy tries to sell Augustus to a drunken man.

Chapter 10: A Plea Before the Honorable Court. Thirsty Ground. Are Mules Really Smarter Than Horses?

Caldonia is confused by the disappearance of the three slaves and wonders who will leave her next. Skiffington informs her that the three have not been seen and their disappearance is a mystery. Moses and Caldonia have sex again the day after Skiffington's visit, and Moses wants to know when she will free him. She puts him off, angering him.

The next day, Moses makes Celeste work in the fields though she is six months pregnant and does not feel well. Celeste has the baby in the field, and the infant dies. Elias is furious with Moses, whom many slaves blame for the baby's death. When Moses visits Caldonia the next day, she asks him about his actions and tells him to check with her before forcing work on someone who does not feel well.

The following day, Moses confronts Caldonia on why he has not been freed yet. Because of his threatening actions toward Caldonia, Loretta holds a knife to his throat. Moses realizes that there has been a shift in power. Caldonia will not meet with him the next day, and he does not go into the fields the day after. Moses leaves the plantation that night. Gloria and Clement also escape separately from Moses. Skiffington investigates all three disappearances, while feeling like he is losing control.

Chapter 11: A Mule Stands Up. Of Cadavers and Kisses and Keys. An American Poet Speaks of Poland and Mortality

Darcy sells Augustus in Georgia to a poor white couple, Hillard and Hope Ulster. He is their only slave. As soon as he is sold, Augustus starts moving north. He only makes it a few steps before Hillard shoots him in the back. Augustus dies from the wound.

Skiffington is bothered by Moses's disappearance, and he tells the patrollers to work harder to find all three missing slaves. Fern, Calvin, Louis, Dora, and Maude come to Caldonia to comfort her. Caldonia visits the slave quarters daily to interact with her slaves. She worries that more might run away. Elias wants freedom for his wife and children, but he is prepared to wait. On Louis's recommendation, Caldonia makes Elias the overseer.

Chapter 12: Sunday. Barnum Kinsey in Missouri. Finding a Lost Loved One

Waking on Sunday morning, Skiffington has an idea of where Moses might be. With Counsel, Skiffington goes to Mildred's house. Skiffington demands that she "Surrender the property," but Mildred denies anyone is there. As Skiffington pulls out his rifle, it goes off and shoots Mildred dead. The sheriff sends Counsel into the house to find Moses, but he cannot locate him.

When Counsel comes out of the house, he picks up the rifle that Mildred was carrying and shoots Skiffington in the chest, killing him. Moses comes out of the house with his hands up. Counsel tells him never to speak of what he knows or Counsel will kill him. Counsel makes up an explaination for the situation: Mildred shot John, who was shot in return.

Counsel leaves with Moses, and he comes across Barnum, Harvey, and Oden as well as Elias and Louis. Counsel tells them the story of what happened. Harvey decides justice should be administered to Moses right there. Oden cuts Moses's Achilles tendon. Barnum, who does not agree with the punishment, rides off and soon leaves Virginia for Missouri with his family.

Counsel later returns to Mildred's house with Oden and Travis looking for gold, but finding none. The deputy sheriff takes many items from the house, but with Robbins's support, Caldonia fights him in court and eventually wins the property back. Darcy and Stennis are caught and sentenced to prison terms. Instead of prison, Stennis is sold again to compensate the people who had lost slaves. Minerva eventually moves to Philadelphia with Winifred. Minerva is lost to Winifred after she meets an African American man and spends some days at his family's home. The missing person sign that Winifred puts up offends Minerva with the statement "Will Answer To The Name Minnie." Though meant with love, Winifred does not see Minerva again for many years.

Postscript

The postscript begins with a letter from Calvin to his sister. Written in 1861 from Washington, D.C., where Calvin has moved, he tells her he found Alice and Priscilla, who own a hotel with other runaway slaves. A piece of art by Alice is displayed in the dining room. It looks like a map of Manchester County. Caldonia reads the letter over and over again, sharing it with Louis, who had become her husband. Moses continues to live on the plantation until he dies.

CHARACTERS

Bennett

Bennett is a slave on the Townsend plantation. He works in the kitchen with Zeddie and sometimes fetches the sheriff during times of crisis.

Boyd

Boyd is a slave child at the Townsend plantation. For a time, he and Grant have the same dream on different nights.

Jean Broussard

Jean Broussard is French slave trader who is jailed in Manchester County on suspicion of the murder of his partner, Alm Jorgensen. Before he is convicted and put to death, Broussard sells Moses to William Robbins.

Dora Cartwright

Dora Cartwright is the daughter of Philomena Cartwright and William Robbins. Her father adores her. Dora and Caldonia are friends.

Louis Cartwright

Louis is the second child born to Philomena Cartwright and William Robbins. His father loves him, and those feelings are returned. Calvin has sexual feelings toward Louis, but he never reveals them because he knows they are not shared. Louis eventually marries Caldonia after Henry's death.

Philomena Cartwright

Philomena was a teenage slave bought by William Robbins. She soon becomes his lover and the mother of his two children. Though she is black, Robbins loves Philomena more than he loves his white wife. He gives Philomena her freedom, buys some of her family members out of slavery, and sets her up in her own house in Manchester County. Philomena runs away to Richmond several times, but she is found and brought back by Robbins.

Celeste

Celeste is a slave owned by Henry Townsend who walks with a distinct limp. She is the wife of Elias and mother to Tessie, Grant, and Ellwood. Celeste is a loving woman who cares for Moses after his return despite the fact that he made her work one day when she was sick and six months pregnant, causing her to lose the baby (named Lucinda). Celeste wants her husband to be cautious when he speaks to the sheriff about Moses, but she also desires freedom for herself and her family.

MEDIA ADAPTATIONS

The Known World: A Novel was released in an unabridged edition on compact disc by HarperAudio in 2004. It is narrated by Kevin Free.

Clement

Clement is a slave on the Townsend plantation. He is involved with Gloria, and he beats up Stamford when he will not leave Gloria alone. Clement and Gloria run away around the same time that Moses leaves. Unlike Moses, Clement and Gloria are successful in their escape.

Robert Colfax

Robert Colfax is another white slave owner and prominent citizen of Manchester County. He Philomena to William Robbins, who was once his friend.

Colley

Colley is a slave owned by Fern.

Darcy

Darcy is the slave speculator who buys the free Augustus from patroller Harvey Travis. Darcy, who regularly deals in free kidnapped slaves, eventually sells Augustus in Georgia.

Delores

Delores is a slave child on the Townsend plantation. Stamford picks blueberries for her during a storm.

Delphie

Delphie is a slave on the Townsend plantation. She has a daughter named Cassandra and shares a cabin with her daughter and Alice. Delphie marries Stamford.

Jebediah Dickinson

Jebediah Dickinson is black man who claims he is free but whose owner, Reverend Mann, claims he forged his papers. Jebediah shows up at Fern's home demanding $500 he says Ramsey owes him from a gambling debt. Fern refuses to pay the alleged debt, but she eventually buys Jebediah from Mann. Though Jebediah works as her slave for a time, she does set him free. It is through Jebediah that Fern learns her husband has probably been unfaithful.

Elias

Elias is a slave on the Townsend plantation who tries to run away but is brought back and has one ear partially cut off. He eventually marries Celeste, and the couple has three children. Elias enjoys carving objects out of wood, such as combs for his wife and a doll for his daughter.

Elias has disagreements with Moses on several occasions after Henry dies. When Moses runs away, Elias becomes the new overseer at the plantation. Like Moses, Elias wants to be free with his wife and children, but he is willing to wait until the time is right.

Ellwood

Ellwood is the infant child of Elias and Celeste.

Fern Elston

Fern is a free black woman who could pass for white if she so desired. She owns slaves and works as a teacher. Fern has educated many of the free blacks in Manchester County, including Dora, Louis, Caldonia, Calvin, and Henry. Fern has a close relationship with Caldonia and stays with her in times of crisis. Fern has a troubled marriage to Ramsey Elston, who is often gone gambling, though she tries to be a "dutiful wife" to him. Ramsey's alleged debt to Jebediah Dickinson leads to more problems for Fern, who learns that Ramsey has been unfaithful. Fern later marries two more times, once to a former slave who fathered her two children.

Ramsey Elston

Ramsey is Fern's husband, a free black man. He is a gambler and a drinker. While he expects Fern to be dutiful, he is often gone on gambling sprees and is probably unfaithful. Fern learns not to trust him, and their marriage eventually ends.

Anderson Frazier

Anderson is a white writer from Canada who interviews Fern in 1881. Anderson writes pamphlets about America and asks her for information about the South, free black slave owners, Henry Townsend, and other topics.

Gloria

Gloria is a slave on the Townsend plantation. She was involved with Stamford but rejects him for Clement. She and Clement escape around the same time as Moses and are never found.

Grant

Grant is the son of Elias and Celeste.

Jamie

Jamie is the young son of Moses and Priscilla. Moses sends Jamie with Priscilla and Alice when they escape.

Hiram Jinkins

Hiram is the man in Louisiana who allows Counsel to spend the night in his barn. He shares his name with his twelve-year-old son, who acts disrespectfully to his mother.

Meg Jinkins

Meg is Hiram's wife. She has sex with Counsel while he stays in the family barn.

Barnum Kinsey

Barnum is a very poor white farmer who works as a patroller. He has a drinking problem. Barnum wants to step in when his fellow patrollers do wrong, such as when they sell Augustus, but does not interfere. Barnum finally rides away when Oden cuts Moses's Achilles tendon. He eventually takes his family to Missouri, where he dies.

Loretta

Loretta is a slave who works as Caldonia's personal maid. Loretta had worked for Caldonia even before her marriage to Henry. Loretta holds a knife to Moses's throat when it seems likely he will harm Caldonia.

Luke

Luke is a young slave who once lived on the Townsend plantation. He takes care of Elias after he tries to run away, and he is later loved and cared for by Elias and Celeste. Luke dies in the field after being worked too hard by another farmer who rented him.

Clara Martin

Clara is a white widow, a cousin of Winifred. John and Winifred visit her one weekend because Clara becomes concerned that her only slave, Ralph, is poisoning her.

Mindy

Mindy, the sister of Toby, was a slave owned by William Robbins. Robbins sells Toby and his sister Mindy to man who assists him when he is not feeling well, but whom Robbins incorrectly comes to believe is an abolitionist.

Minerva

Minerva is the slave child given by Counsel and Belle Skiffington to John Skiffington and Winifred on their wedding day, when she was nine years old. The Skiffingtons do not treat Minerva like a slave but more like a daughter. John is troubled by sexual feelings he develops for her when she is a teenager. Minerva eventually accompanies Winifred to Philadelphia after John's death. She shuts Winifred out for many years because of wording on a missing person's flier that Winifred distributes while looking for Minerva.

Valtims Moffett

Moffett is a preacher who travels around to hold services for slaves on Sunday.

Moses

Moses is the first slave owned by Henry Townsend. William Robbins bought Moses from Jean Broussard and later sold him to Henry. Moses helps Henry build his house and becomes Henry's overseer in the fields, a position he keeps after Henry's death. Though knowledgeable about his work, Moses is demanding as an overseer, sometimes mean to other slaves, and willing to use his position for his own benefit.

Though Moses is married to Priscilla and has a son named Jamie, he becomes sexually involved with Caldonia after Henry's death. Moses believes that he will be freed by Caldonia and perhaps marry her, so he arranges for Priscilla and Jamie to escape with another slave named Alice. When Caldonia does not free him, he becomes angry and leaves the plantation himself. Counsel eventually catches Moses at Mildred's place, and Oden Peoples cuts Moses's Achilles tendon as punishment. Moses is returned to the plantation where he spends the rest of his days.

Calvin Newman

Calvin is Caldonia's twin brother, a black man born free. Calvin loves and helps his sister during her crises by staying with her. He also has forbidden feelings of love for Louis Cartwright. Though Calvin wants to move to New York City, he spends much of his life living with and caring for his demanding, ill mother. Calvin eventually moves to Washington, D.C., where he finds Alice and Priscilla living in freedom as hotel owners.

Maude Newman

Maude is the free black mother of Caldonia and Calvin. Like her daughter, Maude is a slave owner. Maude kills her husband, Tilmon Newman, by poisoning him because he was going to set the family's slaves free. While Maude is supportive of her daughter, she is insistent that Caldonia retain ownership of the family's slaves. Calvin, the son Maude pushes around, cares for Maude when she suffers from years of illness.

Alice Night

Alice is a female slave owned by Henry Townsend. Though a hard worker, it is generally accepted that Alice is not completely sane because a mule once kicked her in the head. She wanders around the plantation and the surrounding area most nights, chanting phrases over and over again. Alice comes across Moses several times when he lies naked in the forest alone. Moses eventually figures out that Alice is not crazy at all, but just pretending. He arranges for Alice to escape with Priscilla and Jamie to freedom. They go to Washington, D.C., where Alice and Priscilla co-own a hotel. Alice creates a work of art that is a detailed map of Manchester County.

Patrick

Patrick is a slave child on the Townsend plantation. He is the younger brother of Delores.

Gilly Patterson

Gilly Patterson was the sheriff of Manchester County before John Skiffington. He is also the uncle to Winifred, who marries Skiffington, then Patterson's deputy sheriff. Gilly is forced out of his office by William Robbins and later returns to England, his family's native country.

Winifred Patterson Skiffington

Winifred is the niece of Gilly Patterson and the wife of John Skiffington. She was born and bred in Philadelphia, where she attended the Philadelphia School for Girls. Like her husband, she does not want slaves and faces a conundrum when she receives Minerva as a wedding present. Winifred generally treats Minerva as a daughter and later is distressed when Minerva goes missing in Philadelphia some time after her husband's death.

Oden Peoples

Oden is a Cherokee Indian who works as a patroller with Harvey and Barnum. He is also Harvey's brother-in-law. Oden often takes Harvey's side in disputes, assisting in the sale of Augustus, for example. Oden also inflicts punishments on slaves, cutting off part of Elias's ear after he runs away and slicing Moses's Achilles tendon.

Priscilla

Priscilla is a slave owned by Henry Townsend. She is married to Moses and the mother of their son Jamie. She works in the fields and becomes worried that Moses is having an affair with Loretta. Priscilla is confused when Moses wants her to take Jamie and leave with Alice, but she ends up in Washington, D.C., co-owning a hotel.

Ralph

Ralph is the only slave owned by Clara Martin. She is concerned that he is trying to poison her despite his faithful years of service.

Rita

Rita is a slave on William Robbins's plantation. She takes care of Henry after Augustus buys Mildred's freedom. Rita insists on coming with the Townsends when they pick up Henry after purchasing his freedom. Augustus smuggles her out of Virginia in a box of walking sticks he sends to New York.

Ethel Robbins

Ethel is William Robbins's white wife and the mother of his daughter, Patience. She comes to resent her husband's relationship with Philomena, though she remains married to him.

Patience Robbins

Patience is the daughter of William Robbins by his white wife. She cares for her father despite his affair with Philomena. She strongly resembles her half-sister Dora.

William Robbins

Williams Robbins is a white plantation owner in Manchester County, the wealthiest therein. He is one of the area's most prominent and powerful citizens. Married to a white woman, Ethel, with whom he has a daughter named Patience, Robbins is in love with one of his slaves, Philomena, with whom he has two children, Dora and Louis. He gives Philomena her freedom and sets her up in a house in a white neighborhood in the county. Robbins also ensures that Fern educates their children. Robbins feels a deep affection for his children as well as for Henry Townsend, whom he advises on financial matters and sets up as a plantation owner himself. He physically abuses Philomena when she runs away to Richmond, and his relationship with her destroys his marriage. Robbins eventually dies of a stroke with his daughters Patience and Dora at his side.

Belle Skiffington

Belle is the wife of Counsel. She dies in a smallpox epidemic on his plantation.

Carl Skiffington

Carl Skiffington is the father of John Skiffington. Carl once worked as a slave overseer in North Carolina, but after the death of his wife, he and his adult son move to Virginia. Carl becomes a preacher and lives with his son after John marries Winifred.

Counsel Skiffington

Counsel is the North Carolina-based cousin to John Skiffington. He attends John's wedding to Winifred and presents them Minerva as a wedding gift. Counsel later loses his family, all his slaves, and much of his property after a smallpox epidemic sweeps through his plantation. He burns it to the ground and leaves for a trip across the country, which takes him through Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. Though believed dead, Counsel later turns up in Manchester County, where John takes him on as his deputy sheriff. John believes that Counsel is lazy in his duties. Counsel kills John with Mildred's rifle and covers up his crime.

John Skiffington

John Skiffington works first as the deputy sheriff and later as the sheriff of Manchester County. He tries to be as fair as possible to both whites and free blacks, but he often finds his position challenging and sometimes reads the Bible in times of stress. Dealing with his patrollers causes him many problems.

Skiffington marries Winifred, the niece of the sheriff for whom he was a deputy, and, like his Philadelphia-born wife, is troubled by his cousin Counsel's gift of a slave girl, Minerva, as a wedding present. Skiffington does not want to own slaves. When Counsel returns from his long journey, Skiffington hires his cousin as his deputy. Counsel eventually kills Skiffington when the pair go to Mildred's house looking for Moses.

Sophie

Sophie is a slave on Robert Colfax's plantation. Sophie's tales of Richmond and its greatness compel Philomena to run away there several times. After Robbins gives Philomena her freedom and buys her a home, Philomena insists that Robbins purchase Sophie Colfax for her.

Stamford

Stamford is a slave on the Townsend plantation who is forty years old at the time of Henry's death. He is always chasing young women. He was involved with Gloria and gets into a physical altercation with Clement over her. Stamford also tries to gain the affections of Cassandra, to no avail. Going out into a storm to get blueberries for Delores and Patrick changes Stamford, who eventually marries Delphie.

Stennis

Stennis is the slave of Darcy, the slave speculator. He assists his master in his dealings.

Tessie

Tessie is the eldest child of Elias and Celeste. She is nearly six at the time of Henry's death.

Toby

Toby was a slave owned by William Robbins. He worked as Robbins's groom before Henry did. Robbins sells Toby and his sister Mindy to a man who assists him when he is not feeling well, whom Robbins incorrectly comes to believe is an abolitionist.

Ray Topps

Ray is a representative from Atlas Life, Casualty and Assurance Company. He tries to sell Caldonia insurance on her slaves several times.

Augustus Townsend

Augustus was once a slave on William Robbins's plantation, but he worked to buy his freedom as well as that of his wife Mildred and son Henry. Augustus is a talented woodworker who can carve walking sticks, cabinets, bed frames, and other items. Robbins had allowed Augustus to hire himself out to make such objects and keep part of the profit to buy his freedom, which he succeeded in doing when was about twenty-two years old. After he is freed, Augustus first rents, then buys, land and builds a house for himself and his family on the far end of Manchester County.

Though Augustus loves his son, he is troubled by Henry's continuing connection to Robbins after Henry became free. Augustus beats Henry after learning Henry is to become a slave owner. Augustus only visits his son when he is ill in the last few years of his life and would only stay in the slave quarters. Soon after his son's death, Augustus is kidnapped and sold back into slavery by two patrollers. He ends up in Georgia, where he is shot by his new owners soon after they buy him.

Caldonia Townsend

Caldonia is a black woman who was born free and received her education from Fern. She is the daughter of Maude and the sister of Calvin. Caldonia was married to Henry Townsend until his death, which came only a few years after their wedding. They had no children. After Henry's death, Caldonia decides to keep the plantation running under her supervision. Missing Henry, Caldonia begins a physical relationship with Moses, who tells her stories about Henry's past. She chooses not to free Moses. Caldonia cares about her slaves and tries to ensure she has control over them, but she becomes concerned when six leave soon after Henry's death. Caldonia eventually marries Louis Cartwright.

Henry Townsend

Henry was born in slavery to Augustus and Mildred Townsend. William Robbins owned them until Augustus bought first himself, then his wife, and finally his son out of slavery. Henry is an intelligent boy who works as Robbins's groom and learns how to make shoes and boots. Robbins feels affection toward him, even after his parents buy his freedom when he is a young man. Henry remains close to Robbins and spends much time at the Robbins's plantation after he is freed. Robbins gives him financial advice and helps set up Henry as a land owner and slave owner. After building up his property, Henry marries Caldonia. The couple have a happy marriage until Henry dies after a short illness at the age of thirty-one.

Mildred Townsend

Mildred was born into slavery and worked on William Robbins's plantation. She is married to Augustus and is the mother of Henry. Her husband buys her freedom from Robbins when she is twenty-six years old. Mildred is troubled by the conflicts between her husband and son, but she shares many of Augustus's concerns about Henry's relationship with Robbins.

Though Augustus's work takes him away from their home for long periods of time, Mildred reports him missing to Counsel when Augustus does not return soon after Henry's death. She does not know that slave traders have bought him until Barnum informs Sheriff Skiffington of Augustus's situation. Mildred does not learn of her husband's death, but while he is gone, she hides runaway Moses in her home. Skiffington looks for the missing Moses there and kills Mildred when his rifle accidentally goes off.

Harvey Travis

Harvey is a poor white farmer who works as a patroller in Manchester County. He is married to a full-blooded Cherokee woman, the sister of Oden, with whom he has several children. Harvey is often cruel to those he encounters while on patrol. For example, he eats Augustus's free papers and sells him to Darcy, a slave speculator.

Clarence Wilford

Clarence is poor white farmer who also works as a patroller. He is married to Beth Ann. He comes in conflict with Harvey over a cow that Harvey sold to Clarence.

Zeddie

Zeddie is a slave who works as a cook on the Townsend plantation. She is the second slave purchased by Henry.

Zeus

Zeus is a slave owned by Fern and Ramsey. He acts as a servant to Fern, who trusts him more than any of her other slaves.

THEMES

Slavery

Slavery is one of the primary ideas explored in The Known World: A Novel. It is an accepted norm in the book, rarely challenged. The book is set in a fictional but realistic Virginia county in the antebellum South, where both whites and free blacks own slaves. However, white slave owners generally wield more power than their free black counterparts. William Robbins and Robert Colfax are the two richest, most prominent white slave owners. Robbins, especially, is seen as a community leader who, for example, controls who is sheriff—he forces out Gilly Patterson in favor of John Skiffington—and can ensure patrollers will not bother certain free blacks—one complaint to Robbins about the patrollers' behavior ensures Fern is never bothered by them again. Some poor whites also own at least one slave.

What makes The Known World's exploration of slavery unusual is its focus on free blacks who own slaves. Before his unexpected death at the age of thirty-one, Henry Townsend had a number of slaves and an expanding plantation. Henry had been born a slave but his father, Augustus, worked to buy his freedom as he had purchased his own as well as his wife's. After Henry's death, his free black widow, Caldonia, continues to run the plantation and keep the family's slaves. Other free blacks in the novel also own slaves, including Caldonia's mother, Maude, who secretly poisoned her husband rather than allow him to free their slaves, and Caldonia's teacher and friend, Fern. While Moses finds being owned by a fellow black man unusual at first, few free blacks question this situation. Only Henry's parents raise a significant objection. Augustus beats his son when Henry tells him that he bought Moses, and he refuses to stay in his son's house or allow his wife to do so the few times Augustus and his wife visit Henry's plantation.

Racial Tensions

Though the institution of slavery is generally accepted in Manchester County, there are significant racial tensions between whites and blacks as well as between certain blacks. For example, though Sheriff John Skiffington tries to enforce the law fairly for both blacks and whites, many of the men who work for him do not share this approach. Patrollers like Harvey Travis resent all blacks, especially free ones, and unfairly harass them. Harvey eats the papers that state Augustus is free and then sells the free black man back into slavery. Harvey has the help of Oden Peoples, though Barnum Kinsey is uncomfortable with the action. Even the sheriff's cousin, deputy sheriff Counsel, does not care when Mildred reports that her husband is missing. John only learns of the situation with Augustus when Barnum's conscience bothers him enough, though he tells the sheriff, "don't put me on the nigger side."

There is also tension between free blacks and enslaved blacks. Moses finds it simply odd to be owned by another black man at first, but the situation grows more tense when Henry changes his attitude toward him after William Robbins finds them wrestling in Henry's partially completed house. Robbins tells Henry how he should treat someone he owns if he wants to be in control, and Henry changes his behavior accordingly. While Calvin tries to treat his sister's slaves with care and dignity, his mother looks at them as her daughter's "legacy." Caldonia also cares about her slaves, but she comes in conflict with Moses after they become physically intimate. Moses believes that Caldonia will free him and perhaps marry him, putting him in charge of the plantation. These hopes are dashed by Caldonia, who wonders about the legality of their relationship at one point. Moses responds to the rejection by running away, creating havoc for Caldonia, the plantation, and the community.

Interpersonal Relationships

Underscoring much of the plot in The Known World is an emphasis on the importance of familial and interpersonal relationships, sometimes across racial lines. Though Caldonia is sometimes in conflict with her difficult mother, Maude and Caldonia's twin brother are supportive after Caldonia is widowed. They stay with her for a long time, though Calvin remains longer than their mother. As close as Caldonia is to her family, her bond with Fern, her friend and former teacher, goes even further. Fern is in the room with Caldonia when Henry dies and stays with Caldonia longer than Maude and Calvin. Fern does all she can to support Caldonia.

Even though Augustus and Mildred take issue with Henry's decision to become a slave owner, they also come to the plantation every time he is sick. They love their son. Augustus worked tirelessly to buy himself, his wife, and his son out of slavery from William Robbins. Augustus even smuggled Rita, Henry's caretaker on Robbins's plantation after his parents were free, out of slavery for Henry's sake, though Augustus did not want to take the risk. Many of the slaves on the Townsend plantation watch out for one another, even when in conflict with each other. Though Celeste has reason to hate Moses—he forced her to work when she was ill and six months pregnant, resulting in the loss of the child—she tries to give him food when he locks himself in his cabin after Caldonia's rejection before he runs away.

One of the more unusual interpersonal relationships in the book is between Robbins and Henry. Robbins treats Henry like a son, similar to the way he treats Dora and Louis, his beloved children by his former slave Philomena. While Henry is still on his plantation as a slave, Robbins finds him to be intelligent and an extremely reliable groom. Robbins also gives him a trade by having another slave teach him how to make shoes and boots. After Augustus buys Henry's freedom, Henry sometimes returns to the plantation to make shoes and boots for Robbins's white guests. Such visits concern Henry's parents, but they do not stop him from going. Robbins goes on to teach Henry about finance, helps him buy his first slave, sells him his first piece of land, and stands up for him as necessary. Henry and Robbins are as close as a son and father, a relationship that emphasizes the complexities of race relations in Jones's novel.

Love Relationships

Like family and interpersonal relationships, there are many types of love relationships in The Known World, some of which are not as reliable as those between family and friends. Fern has a difficult marriage to a gambler named Ramsey, who is often gone on gambling sprees. She learns that he has probably cheated on her, though she remained faithful. Caldonia looks for comfort in the words and arms of Moses after her beloved Henry's death, though she will not allow the relationship to go beyond physical intimacy. Her brother Calvin is in love with Louis, but Calvin knows that Louis will not return his feelings and does not even try to have a relationship with him. Moses arranges for his wife and son to escape with Alice so that he can be free for Caldonia. While Robbins loves Philomena more than he loves his white wife and gives her much in the way of financial support, he also physically abuses her when she runs away to Richmond with their children. Not all love relationships are unhappy in the novel: Augustus and Mildred have a solid marriage. While John lusts for Minerva, he is faithful to Winifred until his death. Elias and Celeste also have a genuine, loving relationship. All of these love relationships show the depth and breadth of feelings, and ultimately the humanity of all involved.

STYLE

Nonlinear Plot

The Known World features a nonlinear plot: The action in the book does not move in a straightforward, chronological fashion. Instead, it moves back and forth in time and between the stories of different people, linking the events with common characters and situations. The primary plot focuses on the death of Henry Townsend and both its short-term and long-term effects on his family, slaves, and community. Woven around this primary plot are the backgrounds of Henry and his family as well as other characters such as Fern, John Skiffington, Winifred, and slaves such as Elias and Moses. Other stories are also included, such as the adventures of Counsel after his family and plantation are lost. The nonlinear plot creates drama and complexity as the action builds throughout the novel.

TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY

• There are several other books and poems, such as Milton's Paradise Lost and the Bible, mentioned or discussed in the text of the novel. Pick one of these texts and write a paper in which you discuss the relationship between the book or poem and the themes and/or action of The Known World.
• Divide the class into at least four groups. Each group should represent a primary group found in the novel—enslaved blacks, free blacks, poor whites, and white slave owners. Stage a debate in which each group discusses its role in the novel, addressing such issues such as power, social status, and self-image.
• Conduct research into the psychological effects of slavery on those enslaved as well as those who enslave others. Create a class presentation or write a paper in which you relate your findings to Jones's depiction of slaves owner, slaves, and the wider effects of slavery on the community in The Known World.
• Parent-child relationships are central to The Known World. These relationships are often markedly different from such relationships today. Write a paper in which you explore one set of relationships—perhaps between William Robbins and Louis and Dora Cartwright or Augustus, Mildred, and Henry Townsend—and compare them to your own experiences and observations about parent-child relationships in the twenty-first century.
• Pick one of the many digressive or tangential stories that Jones includes in his book, such as the story of the woman who found Rita in the box in New York or the story of Anderson, the Canadian pamphlet writer who interviews Fern. Write a short story in which you more fully explore one of these marginal characters. Include details about his or her role in the novel described from his or her point of view.

Digressions

Digressions are sprinkled liberally throughout The Known World. They are stories or episodes that are tangential to the primary action at hand. At the beginning of chapter 4, for example, Jones describes the background and motivation of Anderson Frazier, a white Canadian pamphlet writer who interviews Fern about blacks owning slaves, her friend Henry, and other matters in 1881, years after the novel's primary action takes place. Jones includes much information about Anderson, his life, and his writing, which has nothing to do with the novel's main story or his interview with Fern. Similarly, in chapter 2, Jones describes the life and background of Mary O'Donnell Conlon, the New York woman who opens the crate hiding Rita among Augustus's walking sticks. Other tangents provide more specific information on what happens to characters after the end of the novel. In chapter 6, Jones reveals that Stamford eventually marries Delphie and starts his own orphanage. One of his great-granddaughters even gets a street name changed to honor him and his wife in the late 1980s. Such digressions enrich Jones's novel while tying up loose ends.

Epilogue

At the end of The Known World, Jones includes a postscript that acts as an epilogue. The epilogue is the closing section of a novel or play that often answers some of the questions left unanswered by the novel's end. Jones's epilogue centers around a letter written by Calvin to Caldonia, which reveals the fate of Priscilla and Alice. Readers also learn that Moses stayed on the plantation until his death.

Diction in Dialogue

The dialogue in Jones's novel often reflects a colloquial diction: The arrangement and use of words in the dialogue reflect the every day speech of the time, place, and person in the story. Educated characters such as John, Caldonia, Fern, and Robbins generally speak in clear, correct English. Robbins tells Elias upon his capture, "I know Henry Townsend and if I have to pay for a dead one, then that is what I will do. Come here." Colloquial phrasing, however, are still a part of their speech. Talking to Caldonia one night, Henry tells her "I'm tryin…. I spect I'll have the full armor by day after tomorrow." Less educated characters, such as the patrollers and the slaves, speak with even more of a colloquial touch. At one point, Priscilla tells Moses, "You best tell her bout Stamford." Writing the dialogue this way adds to a historical novel's authenticity.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Black Slave Owners in Pre-Civil War America

Though much of the historical data (such as census records), facts (such as the burning of a courthouse in 1912), and academic reports, as well as the county of Manchester, were created by Jones, the basic premise of the book is based in truth: Some free blacks did own other blacks as slaves in pre-Civil War America. In 1830, census figures show that free blacks owned slaves in at least four states: Louisiana, Maryland, South Carolina, and Virginia. These free blacks owned at least 10,000 slaves in total, with most concentrated in Louisiana. Thirty years later, while the vast majority of the approximately 385,000 people identified as slave owners were white, free blacks continued to own slaves. In the states where slavery was legal in 1860, there were about four million black people, and only about 270,000 were free.

Some of the free blacks who were listed as owning slaves actually had purchased a family member such as a spouse or a child. For legal or other reasons, such owners were unable to free the family member whose freedom they purchased. In The Known World, for example, Augustus purchases the freedom of his wife Mildred and his son Henry, but they are legally his slaves. Concerning Henry, Jones writes, "people in Manchester County just failed to remember that Henry, in fact, was listed forever in the records of Manchester as his father's property."

Other free blacks owned slaves who were unrelated to them and used as workers. For example, in South Carolina in 1830, it was estimated that about 25 percent of all free blacks who owned slaves possessed at least ten slaves. There were eight who owned more than thirty slaves, including Justus Angel and Mistress L. Horry. Angel and Horry each owned eighty-four slaves in 1830. Another example can be found in New Orleans, Louisiana, where over ten thousand free blacks lived. About three thousand of these free blacks were slave owners.

Like their white counterparts, the vast majority of free black slave owners owned fewer than five slaves. In South Carolina in 1860, there were 125 free blacks who owned slaves, but only six owned more than ten. William Ellison owned more slaves than any other free black man in South Carolina in 1860. Ellison was born into slavery with the name of April but, like Henry Townsend, learned some trades and bookkeeping. He was freed by his white master, also known as William Ellison, at the age of twenty-six, and he became a significant slave and land owner who made a fortune manufacturing cotton gins and breeding slaves.

Free blacks owned slaves in other states as well just before the Civil War began, including Virginia, where several hundred free blacks owned land and other property. Some of them owned slaves, though they had once been slaves themselves. One such person was Gilbert Hunt. A former slave, Hunt lived in Richmond, worked as a blacksmith, and owned two slaves. In 1860 in Louisiana, at least six free blacks owned more than sixty-five slaves. The owners of a sugar cane plantation, a widow named C. Richards and her son P. C., owned 152 slaves, the most in the state. Another free black man with a significant sugar cane operation, Antoine Dubuclet, also owned more than one hundred slaves.

Some free blacks even became voluntarily enslaved. In a biography of William Ellison, Black Masters: A Free Family of Color in the Old South, authors Michael P. Johnson and James L. Roak claim that there were several examples of free blacks going to court to be allowed to become slaves again. Such free blacks made this choice primarily because of their difficulty providing for themselves.

CRITICAL OVERVIEW

In general, The Known World was lauded as an extraordinary novel when published in 2003. Critics praised Jones's subject matter and the way in which he handled it, as well as his characterizations, prose, and the way he paced and constructed the story. Calling the novel "the best new work of American fiction to cross my desk in years," Jonathan Yardley of the Washington Post went on to state, "The Known World ventures into previously uncovered places and shines a light on them that is at once blindingly bright and surpassingly warm."

A number of critics admired how Jones drew his characters and interlinked their stories. For example, Conger Beasley, Jr., of the National Catholic Reporter commented, "where Jones really succeeds is in the depiction of character, the interaction between the myriad figures—black-white, black-black, white-white—who populate this excruciating world." Writing in the Black Issues Book Review, Carroll Parrott Blue asserted, "Jones's characters, whether slave, worker, woman, child or owner, are engaged in an individual quest for freedom. Jones's brilliance as a writer stems in part from his proportioned sense of each individual's struggle."

Though The Known World is complex, many critics believe that Jones succeeded at balancing the many threads of his story. In Time, Lev Grossman wrote, "The Known World is a glorious, enthralling, tangled root ball of a book—but always returning to the story's tragic core."

Some critics took issue with the novel's convoluted stories and characterizations. The critic in Kirkus Reviews commented, "The first hundred pages are daunting, as the reader struggles to sort out initially glimpsed characters and absorb Jones's handling of historical background information." Echoing this sentiment, Trudier Harris-Lopez of Crisis found the novel bogged down and believes at least one hundred pages could be cut from the text. Harris-Lopez also stated, "All the things I found engaging about the novel were subsumed by the exasperation of having to go through so much detail about minor characters." While Susannah Meadows of Newsweek praised Jones's storytelling, she also wrote, "The human mystery that drives the narrative is the question of how a freed man could own another, and Jones never quite solves the puzzle of Henry's odd spiritual kinship with his former master."

CRITICISM

A. Petrusso

Petrusso is a freelance writer with degrees in history and screenwriting. In this essay, Petrusso examines the female characters in the novel, comparing the varying degrees of power they wield.

In an interview about The Known World: A Novel with Sarah Anne Johnson of The Writer, Edward P. Jones had the following to say about the "dynamic women" in his book:

There are such women nowadays, and these women can't be the first ones. There must've been women like that before. I'm not doing anything extraordinary with them. I don't have some woman running for the Senate in Virginia in 1855—that would be ridiculous. You have women who, within the scheme of things, are able to stand up and assert themselves.

Jones goes on to point out that Fern "knows that she has a certain power" because she taught the children of William Robbins, the leading white citizen, landowner, and slave owner in Manchester County. Specifically, Fern is able to put the white men who work as patrollers in their place after just one incident of harassment because of her connection to Robbins, who takes care of the matter for her. Fern is not the only female character who has power and uses it in some significant way in the novel. Other characters—Caldonia, Maude, Philomena, Dora, Alice, Loretta, Gloria, Minerva, Mildred, Winifred, and even Patience and Ethel Robbins—display at least some independent sense of self. None become passive victims of their circumstances but assert varying, and sometimes surprising, amounts of influence considering the time and place of the novel. Though they must all struggle with the effects of male domination, their strength allows them some amount of control over their own destinies in certain circumstances.

Arguably the most powerful woman in The Known World is Fern, and not simply because she can count on Robbins to right race-related wrongs for her. Fern chooses to live as a free black when she could pass for white, as other members of her family do. She could walk away from her life as a free black woman if she so chose, an option few others in the novel possess. Even living as a free black, Fern still has power because she is educated and has passed on that education to other free blacks, such as Louis and Dora Cartwright and Caldonia and her twin brother Calvin, as their teacher. Her position gives her status in the community and a following she could potentially draw on if she desired. In addition, Fern owns a house and slaves.

However, like every powerful person in The Known World (and the world itself), Fern has an Achilles heel. She is married to Ramsey Elston, a free black man who leaves her when he goes on gambling and drinking sprees. While, Fern remains loyal to him, even to the point of not bathing while he is gone as he desires, her loyalty does have limits. Fern's world becomes unstable when she learns from Jebediah that her husband has been unfaithful to her in Richmond. But because the novel moves around in time, readers learn that Fern overcomes this problem, marries other men, and retains her property and influence. It is significant that the pamphlet writer Anderson Frazier seeks out Fern—not anyone else—in 1881 for information about the area, its people, and slavery. Fern is embodies authority, reason, and support to many, especially Caldonia.

Like Fern, Maude and Caldonia have power and influence as free blacks and slave owners. Maude is a formidable woman from a long line of free, though poor and non-slave owning, blacks. She marries a former slave, Tilmon Newman, who had bought his freedom. Later in their marriage, Maude convinces her husband to focus on building up their own family and financial circumstances, including purchasing slaves, instead of following through with his original plan to buy the freedom of his parents and two other family members. Those four people die while still enslaved. Maude goes as far as to murder her husband by poisoning him with arsenic rather than let him free the slaves he owns. Maude is enthralled with economic power, what she terms "legacy," and she plans to pass the slaves and wealth she has on to her son Calvin. Maude also exerts power over her son in another way. She forces him to care for her for many years while she is sick with a mysterious illness, even though she "really didn't like him anymore." With this power play, she manipulates him into accepting another kind of family legacy.

Maude tries to influence Caldonia in a different way. Maude's first concern when Henry dies is that Caldonia will be like her father and want to free her slaves, instead of embracing the economic power Henry's death gives her. Maude glosses over Caldonia's grief about Henry. The mother does not stay as long as Fern does when Caldonia needs her love and support. Yet Caldonia understands what she has inherited and the problems that go with it. As with Maude, Caldonia's power is primarily economic and is derived from owning the land and slaves that Henry left her, though she also is educated and can count on Robbins's support as needed because of the connection he had with Henry.

But Caldonia's sorrow over the unexpected death of her husband and inexperience as a slave owner lead to problems that undermine that power. She starts an ill-advised sexual relationship with her slave overseer, Moses, in an attempt to feel closer to Henry. Caldonia also does not manage her slaves as well as she could; six run away, and only Moses is caught and returned. Jones implies that the situation at the Townsend plantation stabilizes when Caldonia marries Louis Cartwright, Robbins's son with his former slave Philomena Cartwright.

Philomena and Dora Cartwright do not have the same kind of power as Fern, Maude, and Caldonia. While they are free black women, all of their power and prosperity comes directly from their relationship with Robbins, and thus has its limits. Philomena was a teenage slave whom Robbins bought from Robert Colfax, another rich white man in Manchester County, after seeing her at the Colfax plantation. Robbins soon begins a sexual relationship with Philomena and treats her more as his beloved mistress than slave. He moves Philomena off the plantation and into a house with a maid; he frees her and buys her mother, brother, and friend Sophie for her as she requests; and he has two children with her, Dora and Louis, whom he adores. Robbins also has Fern educate both of his children, spends time with them, and showers them with love and affection.

Yet Philomena is still in some sense enslaved to Robbins, as he has control over her life. Everything she has comes from Robbins, which keeps her from the one thing she desperately wants: a life elsewhere. For years before Philomena left the Colfax plantation, Sophie filled Philomena's head with ideas about the greatness of the city of Richmond, though she had never been there herself. After Philomena is living in her own home, she runs away to Richmond at least twice. When Philomena goes to Richmond with young Louis and Dora, Robbins beats her so severely when he finds her that she cannot eat as well on one side of her mouth for the rest of her life. Though there is no doubt of Robbins's intense feelings toward Philomena and Dora, they would have very little in the way of economic power or any other type of power without him.

In some ways, several of the slave women in The Known World have more power than the "free" Philomena. Alice, especially, knows how to create power in difficult circumstances. As Moses comes to realize, Alice's whole "crazy in the head" persona is fake. She was allegedly kicked in the head by a mule years earlier and has been eccentric ever since. Alice chants, sings, and dances seemingly without regard to time, place, or circumstance. Creating this persona allows her to roam around freely at night despite being enslaved. Patrollers learn to just avoid her for the most part, creating a limited freedom many slaves would envy. These skills also come in handy when Moses decides to rid himself of his family. Alice agrees to take Priscilla and Jamie and run away. Alice is able to get away in part because of what she has learned while acting insane. The situation ends in economic prosperity and power for her as Alice and Priscilla are owners of a hotel for blacks in Washington, D.C.

While slaves like Loretta, Gloria, and Minerva also have some power, it is much narrower. Loretta is a house slave, the long-time maid to Caldonia, but she is more of a companion than anything else. Loretta has one powerful moment when Moses gets angery when he learns that Caldonia does not intend to free him or marry him. It is Loretta who gets the situation under control by holding a knife to his throat; Loretta's power extends to Moses's life at that moment. Gloria's power is more personal. She decides to end her relationship with Stamford and start a relationship with Clement. The men get into a fight over her, evidence of the power a woman can have over men. With Clement, Gloria eventually successfully escapes the Townsend plantation.

For a slave, Minerva has as an ideal situation as possible. She is treated not like a slave but kind of like a beloved thing—daughter or pet—by the Skiffingtons. They do not want to own slaves, but the child Minerva is thrust upon them as a gift. The couple does not want to sell her and risk what could happen to her, but they do not free her either. Minerva does not really do any work that would not be considered chores by any other child, has her own room, and receives an education. This kind of power is derived from the Skiffingtons' choices, not Minerva's own, but it is significant nonetheless. Minerva's own power comes in young adulthood when Winifred takes her to Philadelphia after John Skiffington dies. Minerva asserts her personal power by becoming involved with a man and choosing not to respond to Winifred's attempts to find her because a phrase on the "missing person" sign offends her. Minerva chooses who she wants to be at that moment: a truly free individual.

The last four significant female characters—Mildred, Winifred, and Patience and Ethel Robbins—paradoxically have the least amount of power when it seems that should have the most influence and freedom. Mildred is technically owned by her husband because he bought her from Robbins. She exists in support of others, primarily Augustus. Mildred follows Augustus's lead, even when she does not agree with him. She is willing to stay in the main house and not a slave cabin after her son's death, but Augustus will not. When Augustus is sold to a slave trader, Counsel dismisses her concerns. Mildred has to depend on others to get the sheriff's attention. Mildred's most powerful moment is when she successfully hides Moses from the sheriff, showing she has fortitude. It is not until Skiffington accidentally shoots and kills her that Moses's true location is discovered.

The white women in The Known World have less power than any other female characters in the book, even less than a number of the slaves. Winifred, Ethel, and Patience are trapped by their circumstances. While Winifred is a Northerner with Quaker leanings, her anti-slavery views are compromised by the wedding gift of Minerva. She eventually loses Minerva because of what living in the South has done to her way of thinking. Winifred has some power in her marriage, but it is limited. Ethel has it even worse: Her husband loves one his former slaves more than he loves her. Ethel is able to retain some semblance of social standing because her husband does not physically leave her, divorce her, or throw her out. However, all Ethel is left with is bitterness and a wing in Robbins's home to which she can retreat as needed, trappings of power from a lost life. Patience loves and is still loved by her father, which does give her more power than her mother, yet even her father admits her education is inferior to that of her half-siblings.

Jones's depiction of women in The Known World is as varied and complex as the novel itself. While the male characters lust for and grasp at power in many different ways, Jones's female characters display a more subtle approach to control and influence in their lives and circumstances. In some ways, their power comes from the fact that the novel focuses as much on them as it does on their male counterparts. They are an essential part of a stunning novel.

WHAT DO I READ NEXT?

Lost in the City (1992) is Jones's first book. This collection of short stories explores the lives of African Americans in the Shaw neighborhood of Washington, D.C.

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971), by Ernest J. Gaines, is a fictional autobiography of a woman who began life as a slave and dies many years later as a free woman.

Roots (1976), by Alex Haley, explores seven generations of the author's own real-life family, beginning with his ancestor Kunta Kinte, who is captured by slave traders in his native Gambia and forced into slavery in the United States.

Black Slaveowners: Free Black Slave Masters in South Carolina, 1790–1860 (1995), by Larry Koger, is a historical account of free black slave owners in a southern state in pre-Civil War America.

Source: A. Petrusso, Critical Essay on The Known World: A Novel, in Literary Newsmakers for Students, Thomson Gale, 2007.

Shane Graham

In the following essay, Graham explores the literary heritage of The Known World and discusses its innovative plot and techniques.

Revisiting the slave narrative has become a seemingly obligatory rite of passage for contemporary African-American novelists. This compulsion has been most fortunate for American literature: novels such as Toni Morrison's Beloved, Ishmael Reed's Flight to Canada, Octavia Butler's Kindred, and Charles Johnson's Middle Passage represent some of the finest works by those or any other late twentieth-century writers. To that august catalog must now be added The Known World, the astonishing debut novel from Edward P. Jones, which recently won the 2003 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction.

Early reviews of The Known World have justifiably emphasized the unusual twist Jones gives to the typical slave narrative by illuminating a largely overlooked aspect of U.S. slavery: free blacks who owned slaves. The novel opens with the death of Henry Townsend, and then gradually fills in the back story of how Henry became a man of substantial property, including many slaves, much to the disapproval of his father Augustus, who had bought his son out of slavery when Henry was a teenager. Jones adeptly uses the relationships between masters and slaves to dispel any reductive black-versus-white readings of antebellum American history and to expose the complex dynamics of freedom and domination, wealth and poverty that underlay the hierarchies of power in Virginia in the 1840s and 1850s. For example, William Robbins, the wealthiest and most powerful man in the county, enjoys an almost paternal relationship with his former slave Henry and half-openly acknowledges and provides for the children of one of his slaves as his own. Of the three patrollers profiled in the novel, the mean-spirited Harvey Travis is married to a Cherokee woman whom he bought out of slavery; Oden Peoples, himself a Cherokee, owns a few slaves but "wasn't as white as he always thought he was"; and Barnum Kinsey owns no land and no slaves and thus is, "in the eyes of that world, little more than a nigger." Fern Elston, who teaches free black children, is fair-skinned enough to easily pass for white, but chooses not to do so, though she owns several slaves over the course of the novel.

As the reader may have gathered from this barrage of character names, The Known World is far more than just a story about slave-owning free blacks: It is a portrait of virtually the entire population of Manchester County, Virginia—from field slaves to plantation owners—over the course of several generations. The novel offers a metaphor for itself in the last chapter, when Henry Townsend's brother-in-law Calvin Newman stays in a hotel in Washington, D.C., and sees hanging there a work of art created by fugitive slave Alice Night: "a grand piece of art that is part tapestry, part painting, and part clay structure … [It is] a kind of map of life of the County of Manchester, Virginia."

The tropes of maps and map-making are central to Jones's novel. The book derives its title from the legend "The Known World" inscribed above a sixteenth century world map that Sheriff John Skiffington hangs on the wall of the jail: "The land of North America on the map was smaller than it was in actuality, and where Florida should have been, there was nothing. South America seemed the right size, but it alone of the two continents was called 'America.'" The image suggests that the geographies of power in the U.S. are still being explored and surveyed, and hints at the complexities of such a project. But mapping takes on a more literal importance in the novel as well: Alice Night, the narrator tells us, "mapped her way again and again through the night." By faking brain damage after being kicked in the head by a mule many years before, Alice is able to roam about the countryside freely at night, unmolested by the patrollers who long ago tired of hauling a crazy slave woman back to the Townsend farm. This knowledge of the world beyond her master's property ultimately enables her to make her way to freedom in the North.

Navigating The Known World requires a fair bit of map-making on the reader's own part. In addition to presenting a huge cast of characters, the narrative also moves erratically through time, perhaps validating the views of one white slave-owner that "Time has no meaning anymore…. The world is turning upside down." One of Jones's characteristic devices is the flash-forward to events far beyond the focus of the novel. For instance, after describing the infant slave Ellwood playing with his mother, the crippled field hand Celeste, the narrator suddenly tells us what Ellwood will be doing in twenty years, and then informs us that "In 1993 the University of Virginia Press would publish a 415-page book by a white woman, Marina Shia, documenting that every ninety-seventh person in the Commonwealth of Virginia was kin, by blood or by marriage, to the line that started with Celeste and Elias Freemen." The fact that such citations are entirely fictional is irrelevant to the connections these flash-forwards suggest between America's Slave-holding past and its race-divided present.

The Known World implicitly acknowledges the impossibility of ever fully conveying the intense brutality of slavery. Thus, when the narrative encounters the inevitable scenes of horrifying violence, the descriptions tend to be understated and oblique. Yet with the accumulated effect of multiple intensely violent incidents, the reader's discomfort is only compounded by the casualness and lack of affect with which these scenes are presented; that discomfort is compounded further by the sympathy the narrator establishes for many of the authorities and slave-owners, white and black, who participate in the system that condones and relies on such violence. Jones has tackled U.S. slavery in all its complexities and shades of gray. In rendering for us such a multi-faceted view of our history, he has created perhaps the first American classic of the twenty-first century.

Source: Shane Graham, "The Known World by Edward P. Jones," in the Texas Review, Vol. 25, No. 3/4, Fall/Winter 2004, pp. 156-58.

Robert Fleming

In the following interview, Jones talks to Publishers Weekly about the literature that inspired him to write, as well as how he developed the idea for The Known World.

PW: How did you get the idea for a historical novel, The Known World, after writing a contemporary work, Lost in the City?

Edward P. Jones: The seeds for The Known World were planted over 10 years ago. When I started writing the book in 2000, I had about 26 pages of chapter one done and a few pages of the section where the sheriff realizes he might know where Moses is hiding. In a certain way, I didn't know it would be a full-length book, but I stuck with it. The story carried me along with it.

PW: How did you get the idea to use a black man as a slave owner to address some of the ironies of slavery as an institution?

EPJ: That idea was what kept me interested in this project. I guess the real beginning of that choice grew from my reading of a small book about a Jew who had joined the Nazis during World War II. In college, I came across a book which spoke of blacks having slaves, and it was a shock, just the idea of it.

PW: How can one become an owner of human beings without suffering the corruption of the soul and spirit?

EPJ: I developed that idea once I did the revisions. It all came out then. You know, once you cross that line, you are the same as the others, no matter what race you are. No matter how much good you want to do, once you step over that line, into the role of master, you become the very thing you despise. You are subjugating other human beings.

PW: What inspired you to become a writer?

EPJ: I always loved reading. When I started reading black writers, I discovered two books that had a great impact on me: Ethel Waters's His Eye Is on the Sparrow and Richard Wright's Native Son. I felt as if they were talking to me, since both books had people in them that I knew in my own life. I was shocked to learn black people could write such things. A memorable moment for me occurred when I finished Ellison's Invisible Man, turned it over and saw the picture of the author. I was amazed that a black man had written something like this.

PW: Getting back to your new novel, why did you include vignettes about the brutality of slavery?

EPJ: To highlight the inhumanity of the whole situation of slavery. I didn't want to preach. It was my goal to be objective, to not put a lot of emotion into this, to show it all in a matter-of-fact manner. But still I knew I was singing to the choir. In a case like this, you don't raise your voice, you just state the case and that is more than enough.

PW: How much research did you do?

EPJ: Doing too much research can get in the way of a novel. Since 1992, [I've been] reading books on slavery, but at some point, I decided I'd absorbed enough and trusted what I had in my head about the characters and their world.

PW: At the book's core, you are saying something significant about the will to survive.

EPJ: I was trying to find out how these people survived in these horrifying conditions. I think one way the slaves survived was through the strength of their families. In many ways, we are facing the same problem: the unraveling and destruction of our families and the consequences of that. Families indicate we have a love for something beyond ourselves and that is the key to our survival.

PW: What do you think of some of the current popular trends in African-American literature?

EPJ: I refuse to write about ignorance, despair and weakness, [or] about people going to clubs and doing dumb things. I don't want to write about "you go, girl" people. I want to write about the things which helped us to survive: the love, grace, intelligence and strength of us as a people.

Source: Robert Fleming, "Just Stating the Case Is 'More Than Enough,'" in Publishers Weekly, Vol. 250, No. 32, August 11, 2003, p. 254.

SOURCES

Beasley, Conger, Jr., "A Luminous Look at an Obscure World: Much-Praised Novel Focuses on Black Slave Owners in America," in the National Catholic Reporter, Vol. 40, No. 19, March 12, 2004, p. 15.

Blue, Carroll Parrott, Review of The Known World: A Novel, in Black Issues Book Review, Vol. 5, No. 6, November/December 2003, pp. 50-51.

Fleming, Robert, "Just Stating the Case is 'More Than Enough,'" in Publishers Weekly, Vol. 250, No. 32, August 11, 2003, p. 254.

Grossman, Lev, "On Top of the World," in Time, Vol. 163, No. 16, April 19, 2004, p. 74.

Harris-Lopez, Trudier, "Novel Looks at Largely Unknown World in Ante-bellum Virginia," in (The New) Crisis, Vol. 110, No. 5, September-October 2003, p. 53.

Johnson, Sarah Anne, "Untold Stories: Pulitzer Prize-Winner Edward P. Jones Unveils Little-Known History of African American Slaveholders," in the Writer, Vol. 117, No. 8, August 2004, p. 20.

Jones, Edward P., The Known World: A Novel, Amistad, 2003.

Meadows, Susannah, "Shadowlands of Slavery: A New Novel Blurs the Line Between Bond and Free," in Newsweek, September 8, 2003, p. 57.

Review of The Known World, in Kirkus Reviews, Vol. 71, No. 14, July 15, 2003, p. 928.

Yardley, Jonathan, "A New Novel Charts Some Unpredictable Relations of Race and Power in the Antebellum South," in the Washington Post Book World, August 24, 2003, p. T02.

FURTHER READING

Johnson, Michael, and James L. Roark, Black Masters: A Free Family of Color in the Old South, W.W. Norton, 1986.

While this history is ostensibly about the lives of biracial people in antebellum South Carolina, it focuses primarily on the life of a freed slave named William Ellison, who became quite wealthy.

Johnson, Walter, Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market, Harvard University Press, new ed., 2001.

This book is a comprehensive history of slave markets in the United States, including information on how slaves were treated from market to plantation and how slaves struggled to preserve their humanity.

Lester, Julius, To Be a Slave, Penguin Modern Classics, 1968.

This compilation includes first-person accounts of what it was like to be a slave in pre-Civil War America and related historical commentary.

Link, William A., Roots of Secession: Slavery and Politics in Antebellum Virginia, University of North Carolina Press, 2003.

This book is a history of Virginia in the 1850s, focusing on politics, slavery, free blacks, and other issues related to the state's secession.