Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

Frederick Douglass was a key figure in helping to secure the abolition of slavery in America – discover his Narrative on the 150th anniversary of that event.

Slavery, color, racism and the struggle for equal rights all come together in the Douglass story...a declaration of freedom by a runaway slave that became a powerful antislavery tract

Frederick Douglass has been hailed as one of history's most inspirational leaders and is a personal hero of Barack Obama who called him "the father of the civil rights movement"

His life retains an emblematic glow transcending its biographical ingredients

Frederick Douglass was born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey to a slave woman and an unknown white man in either 1817 or 1818. He was enslaved in Baltimore and Maryland for twenty years, first as a servant and then as a farm hand. He escaped in 1838, married, and settled in Massachusetts where he began work as an anti-slavery crusader. Following a fantastically eloquent speech at an anti-slavery convention he was hired by the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society to lecture about his life as a slave. He was such a brilliantly gifted public speaker that many doubted he had ever been a slave, and this stereotype – that a slave couldn’t be intelligent or articulate – was something he fought ardently against. He wrote his autobiography partly to address this – it became an instant bestseller on publication. After the outbreak of the civil war he successfully persuaded President Lincoln to allow black soldiers to enlist. He was, at various times, Federal Marshall of the District of Columbia, President of the Freedman’s Bank, United States Minister to Haiti, and charge d’affaires for the Dominican Republic. He died in 1895 shortly after delivering a speech at a women’s rights rally.

Frederick Douglass was a key figure in helping to secure the abolition of slavery in America – discover his Narrative this Black History Month. 
 
 A masterpiece … [Douglass] was not only self-educated, with a love of language which should still be an inspiration; he was also self-created’ New York Times 
 
Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in Maryland in 1818. After his escape in 1838 he became an ardent abolitionist, and his autobiography was an instant bestseller upon publication in 1845. In it he describes with harrowing honesty his life as a slave – the cruelty he suffered at the hands of plantation owners; his struggles to educate himself in a world where slaves are deliberately kept ignorant; and ultimately, his fight for his right to freedom. A passionately written, intelligent and highly emotive indictment of slavery, his principle preoccupation was that slavery could be eradicated only through education. This text was key in helping to secure its eventual abolition.

Narrative of Frederick Douglass

A new edition of the classic African American autobiography, now with with the inclusion of Douglass's other works. 
 
The pre-eminent American slave narrative published in 1845, the Narrative powerfully details the life of the abolitionist Frederick Douglass from his birth into slavery in 1818 to his escape to the North in 1838: how he endured the daily physical and spiritual brutalities of his owners and drivers, how he learned to read and write, and how he grew into a man who could only live free or die. 
 
Also included in this edition are Douglass's famous oration The Meaning of the Fourth of July to the Negro and his only known work of fiction, the novella The Heroic Slave. 
 
Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born into slavery in 1818 in Tuckahoe, Maryland. He changed his surname to Douglass to conceal his identity after escaping slavery in 1838 and making his way to Philadelphia and New York. Having been taught to read by the wife of one of his former owners, Douglass wrote later that literacy was his 'pathway from slavery to freedom', and in 1845 he published his instantly bestselling Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Renowned as the foremost African American advocate against slavery and segregation of his time, he repeatedly risked his own freedom as an antislavery lecturer, writer and publisher. He died in Washington, D.C., in 1895, and after lying in state in the nation's capital, was buried in the Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, New York. 
 
Ira Dworkin is Associate Director of the Prince Alwaleed Center for American Studies and Research and Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature at The American University in Cairo.

Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born into slavery in 1818 in Tuckahoe, Maryland. He changed his surname to Douglass to conceal his identity after escaping slavery in 1838 and making his way to Philadelphia and New York. Having been taught to read by the wife of one of his former owners, Douglass wrote later that literacy was his 'pathway from slavery to freedom', and in 1845 he published his instantly bestselling Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Renowned as the foremost African American advocate against slavery and segregation of his time, he repeatedly risked his own freedom as an antislavery lecturer, writer and publisher. He died in Washington, D.C., in 1895, and after lying in state in the nation's capital, was buried in the Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, New York.

Frederick Douglass

Books by Frederick Douglass

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