High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Clotel; or, The President`s Daughter is an 1853 novel by United States author and playwright William Wells Brown, an escaped slave from Kentucky who was active on the anti-slavery circuit. Brown published the book in London, where he stayed to evade possible recapture due to the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, but it is considered the first novel published by an African American and is set in the United States, reflecting the southern institution of slavery. Three additional versions were published through 1867.