Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years a Slave, published in 1853, stands out as an important piece of literature about slavery because it is written from the perspective of a free man who was captured and forced into bondage. He wrote in great detail about this experience after his release twelve years later. Northup’s insights into the workings of the southern system of enslavement reveal the spiritual and physical torment the enslaved people endured. Northup’s powerful language describing his capture, his life as a slave, and then his release helps explain why Twelve Years a Slave became one of the fastest-selling and most popular narratives of the nineteenth century. Although the authenticity and reliability of narratives told by those who were enslaved have been frequently challenged, such narratives are recognized as essential sources for the study of American slavery in the antebellum South.