Adapted into the Academy-Award winning film of the same name, Twelve Years A Slave is a non-fiction memoir written by free-man and slave Solomon Northrop. Born free in New York, Solomon grows to be a skilled carpenter and violinist, becoming married and fathering three children. After being tricked into traveling to Washington, D.C., Solomon is kidnapped and sold into slavery. There, he suffers abuses and humiliations as his identity and self-worth is systematically stripped from him. The memoir chronicles his ordeals while enslaved and the horrifying physical and mental abuse inflicted on those around him. After Solomon managed to regain his freedom and publish his first-person account, Twelve Years A Slave swept across the North and invigorated anti-slavery feeling.

Today, it is best known for being adapted into one of the most critically acclaimed films of all time, with numerous Oscars to its name. This edition is carefully reconstructed from the original 1853 edition combined with the illustrations of 1856.