The American Slave Narrative and the Victorian Novel investigates the shaping influence of writings by Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and other former US slaves on British fiction in the years between the Abolition Act and the Emancipation Proclamation. Lee's book is valuable not only for demonstrating how much Victorian novels have in common with American slave narratives, but for beginning to address the questions this kinship raises...This book breaks new ground, and later critics will build upon it to deepen our understanding of the relationship between the slave narrative and the Victorian novel.