Douglass set out to change that with his memoir and treatise on abolition. Prior to the publication of the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, it was common for whites (both masters and abolitionists) to write stories on behalf of those who were in bondage. Douglass spent the next few years giving hundreds of anti-slavery speeches but frequently encountered hostility from Americans who did not believe that he, such an eloquent and intelligent man, had grown up enslaved. Upon hearing Douglass speak at an anti-slavery convention in Nantucket in 1841, Garrison and his Anti-Slavery Society hired Douglass to travel the country speaking about the injustices and brutalities of slavery. After settling in Massachusetts, Douglass began reading The Liberator and met William Lloyd Garrison. Frederick Douglass, born enslaved around 1818, escaped to the North in 1838. OWNED BY CONTEMPORARY WOMAN ABOLITIONIST, SUSAN COPLEY CABOT.

RARE FIRST EDITION IN ORIGINAL CLOTH WITH IMPORTANT PROVENANCE OF THE BEST KNOWN SLAVE NARRATIVE OF THE ANTEBELLUM PERIOD.

He advanced and extended that tradition and is rightfully designated one of its greatest practitioners.”-John W.Original cloth. “None so dramatically as Douglass integrated both the horror and the great quest of the African-American experience into the deep stream of American autobiography. It includes a chronology of Douglass’s life, a thorough introduction by the eminent Douglass scholar John Blassingame, historical notes, and reader responses to the first edition of 1845. This edition of the book, based on the authoritative text that appears in Yale University Press’s multivolume edition of the Frederick Douglass Papers, is the only edition of Douglass’s Narrative designated as an Approved Text by the Modern Language Association’s Committee on Scholarly Editions. The book, which marked the beginning of Douglass’s career as an impassioned writer, journalist, and orator for the abolitionist cause, reveals the terrors he faced as a slave, the brutalities of his owners and overseers, and his harrowing escape to the North.

In 1845, just seven years after his escape from slavery, the young Douglass published this powerful account of his life as a slave and his triumph over oppression. It is exceptional.”-Nancy Hewitt, Distinguished Professor Emerita, Rutgers University The autobiography of Frederick Douglass (1818–1895), Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, is widely regarded as a classic of American nineteenth-century history, of African-American studies, and of literature. The powerful story of slavery that has become a classic of American autobiography, in an authoritative edition “This edition is the most valuable teaching tool on slavery and abolition available today.

The autobiography of frederick douglass