Brown, William Wells (born ‘William’) (c. 1816–c. 1884)

US reformer, writer, and abolitionist. His pioneering works of black fiction and history include his autobiography Narrative of William W Brown, A Fugitive Slave (1847), The Negro in the American Rebellion (1867), and Clotel, or The President's Daughter (1853), long thought to be the first novel by a black American.

He was born in Lexington, Kentucky. After adopting the name of the Wells Brown who assisted his escape from slavery (1834), he lectured and wrote widely on abolition and other reform causes. His main novel was based on the rumour that Thomas Jefferson had fathered a child with a slave woman; when published in the USA in 1864 it was delicately retitled, Clotelle: A Tale of the Southern States.