Nonfiction · 1845
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 Wendell Phillips’s letter, the narrative itself, and the appendix in which Douglass distinguishes the Christianity of Christ from the Christianity of this land. William Lloyd Garrison’s preface — a fellow abolitionist introducing Douglass to readers, not Douglass’s own words — is not included.
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About this edition
The text is free of copyright. This edition was prepared from an authoritative digitisation, processed by Bibliomancer under its own review protocol; every automated correction is recorded in its transformation log. Rights assessed for CA, EU, GB, US.
Part of American Literature, Political Thought.
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About the author
1818–1895 · Victorian
Frederick Douglass (c. 1818–1895) was born into slavery on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, taught himself to read, and escaped to the North in 1838. His Narrative (1845) made him the best-known Black abolitionist speaker and writer in America and Britain; he founded and edited the newspaper The North Star in Rochester, New York, advised Lincoln during the Civil War, and later held federal office, including as minister to Haiti. He wrote two further autobiographies, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) and Life and Times (1881).
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