"The earliest biography of Sojourner Truth, the Black abolitionist and women's rights activist. Blockson calls this work "one of the earliest narratives of an American black slave woman." Indeed, it is one of the most remarkable books of the period and almost certainly the first work dedicated to supporting the credibility of the testimony of a black woman in a period of very weak legal protections, when accusations and prejudice triumphed over evidence. The work, written by British-born newspaper editor Gilbert Vale, consists of a narrative of Isabella Baumfree, before she changed her name to Sojourner Truth. Based on careful interviews he made with her, it was written in response to the sensationalist murder of Elijah Pierson in the religious cult under the patriarchal dominance of a misogynist white male "prophet" called Matthias. Isabella was officially a servant in the homes of two of the cult's members. The work was intended as a full-throated public rebuke of William Stone's 1835 work Matthias and His Impostures; or the Progress of Fanatacism Illustrated in the Extraordinary Case of Robert Matthews. He accuses Stone of "transferring the sins he has taken under his protection to others not guilty of the crimes, but unfortunately poor, uneducated, and coloured. He could expect no defence from a woman, formally a slave incapable of reading or writing." This work supplied Truth with the necessary legal defence: she successfully sued her accusers for slander, becoming the first black person to win such a suit. Ref: Humez, Jean M. "Reading 'The Narrative of Sojourner Truth' as a Collaborative Text." Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, vol. 16, no. 1, University of Nebraska Press, 1996, pp. 29-52."--