The Autobiographies
Frederick Douglass was and remains one of the most recognizable figures from the nineteenth-century United States. He was among the “most photographed” people of his day and among the world’s most gifted writers and orators. His life was characterized by a constant process of movement, change, and reinvention, and his autobiographies reflect his ongoing interest in self-definition, history, and memory. Douglass wrote and published three autobiographies, beginning with his most famous autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself (1845). Douglass’s first autobiography positions him in the mold of a self-made man. He also outlines in painful detail how enslavement and race subjugation are processes maintained by brutal violence. No one is born a slave, and enslavers required an entire national culture to maintain the bloody system. “You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man,” Douglass famously declares.
Later readers have marked the notable absence of Douglass’s family from his autobiography, including his grandmother and siblings, and his wife, Anna Murray Douglass, who facilitated his escape from enslavement. Subsequent autobiographies expand on some of Douglass’s earlier life, but they shine most brightly on his growth as an intellectual and as an activist. Douglass’s second autobiography, My Bondage and my Freedom (1855), articulates his break from the white antislavery establishment. In his introduction to the book, fellow Black activist and friend James McCune Smith declares: “It is an American book, for Americans, in the fullest sense of the idea. It shows that the worst of our institutions, in its worst aspect, cannot keep down energy, truthfulness, and earnest struggle for the right.” Douglass’s final autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881), went through several editions and expansions and covers Douglass’s life through his role as U.S. Ambassador to Haiti.
Frederick Douglass. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself. Boston: Anti-Slavery Office, 1845.
“I was born in Tuckahoe, near Hillsborough, and about twelve miles from Easton, in Talbot county, Maryland.” So begins Douglass’s Narrative, one of the most important autobiographies in American literary history, published while Douglass was still a fugitive. Narrative sold 5,000 copies within just a few months.
This copy of Douglass’s Narrative was owned by white abolitionist Samuel J. May. The article pasted on the cover, “Testimony in Relation to Slavery” from the Boston Courier (reprinted in The Liberator, June 6, 1845), offers an early review of Douglass’s Narrative. This copy also features a handwritten account of the Waldo sisters (Worcester, MA) offering to support an effort to purchase Douglass’s freedom “in or about 1843.” In the back of the book is an 1894 invitation “to be present and to accept a platform seat at the lecture, ‘Lessons of the Hour,’ by Hon. Frederick Douglass,” which included a violin performance by Douglass’s grandson, Joseph Douglass. The back pages include a handwritten index and a handwritten account of Frederick Douglass and Sammuel Ringgold Ward facing down a violent white mob “by their dignity & admirable bearing, not less than by their eloquence and strong intellect” in 1850.
Samuel J. May Collection.
View selected pages from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave. Dublin: Webb and Chapman, 1845.
This Dublin edition of Douglass’s Narrative was presented to a lending library in July 1845. This copy does not include the usual frontispiece image. “To the Friend of the Slave” and “Critical Notices” are additions to the U.S. edition, and the Appendix has been renamed “Postscript.”
Frederick Douglass. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself. Boston: Anti-Slavery Office, 1851
Frederick Douglass. Vie de Frédéric Douglass: Esclave Américain. Translated by S. K. Parkes. Paris: Pagnerre, 1848.
This French translation of Douglass’s Narrative bears the inscription to “Rev. Samuel J. May with the Translator’s respects.”
Samuel J. May Collection.
Frederick Douglass. My Bondage and My Freedom, with an Introduction by Dr. James McCune Smith. New York and Auburn: Miller, Orton & Mulligan, 1855.
Douglass’s second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom, adds new details to Douglass’s early life and carries his story through his European tour, the start of his newspapers, and his break with the white abolitionist establishment. The title page features an engraved image of Douglass with closed fists, set jaw, and a head-on look. It marks a sharp contrast with how abolitionists often depicted Black people, as meek or subservient.
Frederick Douglass. Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. Hartford, CT: Park Pub. Co., 1881.
First published in 1881, Douglass’s third autobiography underwent several revisions and editions through 1892, and includes his work during and after the Civil War. These volumes were richly illustrated with engravings depicting key moments in Douglass’s life. These copies were published in 1881 and 1882.
View selected pages from Life and times of Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass. The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. London: Christian Age Office, 1887. Third Edition.
British editor John Bright wrote a new introduction to this first English edition of Life and Times, proclaiming that the book “shows… how a great nation, persisting in a great crime, cannot escape the penalty inseparable from crime.”
Frederick Douglass. Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. New rev. ed. Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1892.
Charles W. Chesnutt. Frederick Douglass. Boston: Small, Maynard & Company, 1899.
