Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

Published in the bicentenary year of Frederick Douglass’s birth in 2018 and in a Black Lives Matter era,this anniversary edition of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, presents newresearch into his life as an activist and as an author. As a revolutionary reformer who traveled in Scotland,Ireland, England, and Wales as well as the US, Douglass published foreign language editions of hisNarrative. While there have been many Douglasses over the decades and even centuries, the FrederickDouglass we need now is no representative, iconic, mythic or legendary self-made man but a fallible,mortal, and human individual: a husband, father, brother, and son. His rallying cry lives on to inspiretoday’s activism: Agitate! Agitate! Agitate!

Recognizing that Douglass was bought and sold on the northern abolitionist podium no less than on thesouthern auction block, this edition introduces readers to Douglass’s multiple declarations ofindependence. Douglass’s Narrative appears alongside his private correspondence as well as his earlyspeeches and writings in which he relied on powerful language to do justice to the grim horrors ofslavery. For the first time, this volume also traces the activism and authorship of Frederick Douglass notin isolation but in the context of the reformist work of his wife, Anna Murray, and his daughters and sons.