As his friend William Lloyd Garrison explained in the preface to this work, “He who can peruse without a tearful eye, a heaving breast, an afflicted spirit, …without trembling for the fate of this country in the hands of a righteous God, who is ever on the side of the oppressed… must have a flinty heart, and be qualified to act the part of a trafficker ‘in slaves and the souls of men.” In other words, Douglass wrote to show the wrong of slavery and advance the cause of abolition. We can identify at least two important purposes that Frederick Douglass had in writing his autobiography. Toward the end of his life, Douglass even served as an ambassador to Haiti.

He befriended many notable figures of the day: not only fellow abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison and John Brown but also President Abraham Lincoln. He became a key figure in the abolitionist movement as an orator and newspaper publisher. He advanced and extended that tradition and is rightfully designated one of its greatest practitioners.”-John W.The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is an autobiographical publication prepared by one of the most important American abolitionists of the nineteenth century.Īs the Narrative explains, Douglass was born into slavery but escaped in 1838. “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.

Narrative of the life of frederick