Henry Bibb's Life and Adventures was probably the most copiously illustrated of all the ante bellum slave narratives. But as Marcus Wood points out,*, it is likely that all these illustrations originally appeared in other texts and contexts. Four of them, for example, were used in the 1830s in The Anti-Slavery Record (also in this archive), and Wood has found six others in "Anti-Slavery Almanacs" from 1838, 1839 and 1840. Since Bibb published the narrative himself, he must have been the one who decided to illustrate his own life story with images collected from a range of abolitionist sources. Click on any of the images at left to see a larger version of the illustration.

Narrative of the Life and Adventures
Of Henry Bibb
An American Slave

Written by Himself New York: Published by the Author, 1850.