Narrative of Frederick Douglass

Description

An updated edition of a classic African American autobiography, with new supplementary materials The preeminent American slave narrative first published in 1845, Frederick Douglass'sNarrativepowerfully 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. In addition to Douglass's classic autobiography, this new edition also includes his most famous speech "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" and his only known work of fiction,The Heroic Slave, which was written, in part, as a response to Harriet Beecher Stowe'sUncle Tom's Cabin. For more than sixty-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,500titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust theseries to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-datetranslations by award-winning translators.

Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in 1818 in Tuckahoe, Maryland. Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey changed his surname to Douglass to conceal his identity after escaping slavery in 1838 and making his way to Philadelphia and New York. Having been taught to read by the wife of one of his former owners, Douglass wrote later that literacy was his 'pathway from slavery to freedom', and in 1845 he published his instantly bestselling Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Renowned as the foremost African American advocate against slavery and segregation of his time, he repeatedly risked his own freedom as an antislavery lecturer, writer and publisher. He died in Washington, D.C., in 1895, and after lying in state in the nation's capital, was buried in the Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, New York. Ira Dworkin is Associate Director of the Prince Alwaleed Center for American Studies and Research and Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature at The American University in Cairo.