Narrative of the Life of
Frederick Douglass
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is an 1845 memoir and treatise on abolition written by famous orator and former slave Frederick Douglass during his time in Lynn, Massachusetts. It is generally held to be the most famous of a number of narratives written by former slaves during the same period. In factual detail, the text describes the events of his life and is considered to be one of the most influential pieces of literature to fuel the abolitionist movement of the early 19th century in the United States.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass encompasses eleven chapters that recount Douglass's life as a slave and his ambition to become a free man. It contains two introductions by well-known white abolitionists: a preface by William Lloyd Garrison, and a letter by Wendell Phillips, both arguing for the veracity of the account and the literacy of its author.
In The Norton Critical Edition, Margaret Fuller, a prominent book reviewer and literary critic of that era, had a high regard of Douglass's work. She claimed:
"we have never read [a narrative] more simple, true, coherent, and warm with genuine feeling".
She also suggested that
"every one may read his book and see what a mind might have been stifled in bondage — what a man may be subjected to the insults of spendthrift dandies, or the blows of mercenary brutes, in whom there is no whiteness except of the skin, no humanity in the outward form".
Excerpted from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave on Wikipedia.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
| Author | Frederick Douglass |
| Country | United States |
| Genre | Autobiography, Slave narrative |
| Copyright | Public domain worldwide. |
| Book cover | - |
| Ebooks | Project Gutenberg |
| Scans | University of Michigan |
| Audio | Librivox | Internet Archive Reader: Jeanette Ferguson 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 Ap |
| Read online | Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass |