Explore the life and times of escaped slave William Wells Brown, the first African-American to publish a novel, on Biography.com. William Wells Brown was a writer who was the first African-American to publish a novel. Synopsis William Wells Brown, an escaped slave, published his popular autobiography Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave in 1847. His only novel, Clotel (1853), tells the story of the daughters and granddaughters of President Thomas Jefferson and his slave Currer.