Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

Written by Himself, as the title page insists: Frederick Douglass’s account of his birth into slavery on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, his childhood in Baltimore, his self-taught literacy, his resistance and his escape to the North in 1838. Published in Boston in 1845 by the Anti-Slavery Office, with prefaces by William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips, it became a bestseller and made its author internationally known.

The Narrative is the most read of the American slave narratives and one of the essential documents of the nineteenth century — a plain, exact and furious book.

Bibliomancer presents the complete text as it was first issued: William Lloyd Garrison’s preface, Wendell Phillips’s letter, the narrative itself, and the appendix in which Douglass distinguishes the Christianity of Christ from the Christianity of this land.