2023 Reprint from the 1852 Edition. The preeminent American slave narrative first published in 1845, Frederick Douglass's Narrative powerfully details the life of the abolitionist 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 driver, how he learned to read and write, and how he grew into a man who could only live free or die. This is an autobiographical account of the childhood and youth spent in slavery by a man who became a great abolitionist and leader of anti-slavery activity. Upon its publication in 1845, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, became an immediate best-seller. In addition to its far-reaching impact on the antislavery movement in the United States and abroad, Douglass's fugitive slave narrative earned it a place among the classics of nineteenth-century American autobiography.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS, an outspoken abolitionist, was born into slavery in Maryland in 1818 and, after his escape in 1838, repeatedly risked his own freedom as a prominent anti-slavery lecturer, writer, and publisher. After the Civil War he continued to work as a social reformer, supported women's suffrage, and held several public offices. He died in 1895.