Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, Written by Himself

by Frederick Douglass, Robert B. Stepto (Introduction)

Overview

No book more vividly explains the horror of American slavery and the emotional impetus behind the antislavery movement than Frederick Douglass’s Narrative. In an introductory essay, Robert B. Stepto reexamines the extraordinary life and achievement of a man who escaped from slavery to become a leading abolitionist and one of our most important writers. The John Harvard Library text reproduces the first edition, published in Boston in 1845.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674053755
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	04/15/2009
Series:	John Harvard Library Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	176
Lexile:	1030L (what's this?)
File size:	697 KB

About the Author

Frederick Douglass was born into a family of slavery in early America. Douglass attributes his road to freedom as beginning with his being sent from the Maryland plantation of his birth to live in Baltimore as a young boy. There, he learned to read and, more importantly, learned the power of literacy. In early adolescence, he was returned to farm work, suffered abuse at the hands of cruel overseers, and witnessed abuse visited on fellow slaves. He shared his knowledge of reading with a secret "Sunday school" of 40 fellow slaves during his last years of bondage. In his early 20's, he ran away to the North and found refuge among New England abolitionists.

Hometown:

Tuckahoe, Maryland

Date of Birth:

1818

Date of Death:

February 20, 1895

Place of Death:

Washington, D.C.

Table of Contents

Contents Introduction by Robert B. Stepto Note on the Text Chronology of Frederick Douglass’s Life Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass Selected Bibliography