The Great Escapes: Four Slave Narratives is part of the Barnes & Noble Classicsseries, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: New introductions commissioned from todays top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge the readers viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influencesbiographical, historical, and literaryto enrich each readers understanding of these enduring works.Collected in this volume are four published slave narratives of daring escapes to freedom. William and Ellen Crafts Running a Thousand Miles to Freedom (1860), tells the story of the couple reaching freedom in 1848 by travelling openly by trainwith Ellen Craft posing as a white male planter and William as her servant. This is followed by two versions of Henry Box Browns escape by mailing himself to Philadelphia in 1849Narrative of Henry Box Brown, published that same year in America and Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown, published in 1851 in Britain. Finally, William Wells Browns Narrative of William Wells Brown (1847), tells of the young mans surreptitious exit from a steamboat docked in Ohio, a free state, in 1834.