Solomon Northup was an American abolitionist and the author of the memoir Twelve Years a Slave. A free-born African American from New York, he was the son of a freed slave and a free woman of colour. In 1841, two con men offered him lucrative work playing fiddle in a circus, so he travelled with them to Washington, D.C. He was drugged, kidnapped, and subsequently sold as a slave into the Red River region of Louisiana.

David Fiske is a freelance writer and independent researcher, and the co-author of Solomon Northup: The Complete Story of the Author of Twelve Years a Slave. He was previously senior librarian at the New York State Library.

Tom Butler-Bowdon is Series Editor of the Capstone Classics series, and has provided Introductions for Plato's Republic, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, Machiavelli's The Prince, Florence Scovel Shinn's The Game of Life and How to Play It, and Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet. A graduate of the London School of Economics, he is also the author of 50 Economics Classics (2017) and 50 Politics Classics (2015).

www.butler-bowdon.com