The Confessions of Nat Turner

This article is about the 1967 novel by William Styron. For the Confessions of Nat Turner published in 1831, see Nat Turner's Rebellion § Aftermath.

The Confessions of Nat Turner

First edition cover
Author	William Styron
Language	English
Publisher	Random House
Publication date	1967
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	480
ISBN	0-679-60101-5 (1st ed)
OCLC	30069097
Dewey Decimal	813/.54 20
LC Class	PS3569.T9 C6 1994

The Confessions of Nat Turner is a 1968 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by American writer William Styron. Presented as a first-person narrative by historical figure Nat Turner, the novel concerns Nat Turner's Rebellion in Virginia in 1831. It is a fictional retelling based on The Confessions of Nat Turner: The Leader of the Late Insurrection in Southampton, Virginia, a first-hand account of Turner's confessions published by a local lawyer, Thomas R. Gray, in 1831. ^[1]

Time Magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005. ^[2]

Historical background

The novel is based on an extant document, Turner's "confession" to his white lawyer, Thomas R. Gray. ^[1] In the historical confessions, Turner claims to have been divinely inspired.

Some scholars believe that mental illness may have driven Turner's actions. ^[3] Others believe Turner was moved by religiosity. ^[4]

References

1. Gray, Thomas Ruffin (1831). "The Confessions of Nat Turner" (PDF).
2. "100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005", Time Magazine, accessed 17 April 2009
3. Higginson, Thomas Wentworth (November 7, 2011). "Nat Turner's Insurrection". The Atlantic. Retrieved December 3, 2021.
4. Drexler-Dreis, Joseph (November 1, 2014). "Nat Turner's Rebellion as a Process of Conversion". Black Theology. 12 (3): 230–250. doi:10.1179/1476994814Z.00000000037. ISSN   1476-9948. S2CID   142767518.

Further reading

• Clarke, John Henrik, ed. William Styron's Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond. Boston: Beacon Press, 1968.
• Genovese, Eugene D. "The Nat Turner Case", review of William Styron's Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond, The New York Review of Books , 11.4 (September 12, 1968).
• Mellard, James M. "This Unquiet Dust: The Problem of History in Styron's The Confessions of Nat Turner", Mississippi Quarterly, 36.4 (Fall 1983), pp. 525–43.
• Ryan, Tim A. "From Tara to Turner: Slavery and Slave Psychologies in American Fiction and History, 1945–1968", Calls and Responses: The American Novel of Slavery since Gone with the Wind. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2008.

External links

• Photos of the first edition of The Confessions of Nat Turner