"The Lost German Slave Girl"

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses "The Lost German Slave Girl," by John Bailey, a re-telling of the life of Salome Muller who claimed to have been sold into slavery as a child in the early 19th century. The writer explains that Bailey's book is based on newspaper accounts, first person statements from the actual participants, and transcripts of her court case. The main events in the story and in her trial are described. The writer points out, however, that since Bailey took exceptional license to recreate the saga, inventing a great deal of dialogue and color in order to make it more interesting, it is difficult to separate fact from fiction in his book, and this is problematic for a work purported to be historically accurate.

From the Paper:

"Sally Miller, nee Salome Muller, had litigated a matter in which she claimed that she was a freeborn white woman who had beer wrongfully enslaved as a five-year-old orphan child in New Orleans. Bailey put down the Louisiana law books he had been poring over and read all that was available on the old case. He realized that what he was looking at was much more of a story befitting an author than would be the work he had contemplated. He dropped what he was doing and devoted his time to the telling of Sally Miller's story."

More papers on "The Lost German Slave Girl":

• Book Review # 98563 : "Sally Miller"
• Analytical Essay # 89153 : "Harriet Jacobs' "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl"
• Book Review # 110994 : "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" and Major Themes"

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