"An updated edition of a classic African American autobiography, with new supplementary materials. 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 to his escape to the North in 1838. Douglass tells how he endured the daily physical and spiritual brutalities of his owners and drivers, how he learned to read and write, and how...

“My Bondage and My Freedom,” writes John Stauffer in his Foreword, “[is] a deep meditation on the meaning of slavery, race, and freedom, and on the power of faith and literacy, as well as a portrait of an individual and a nation a few years before the Civil War.” As his narrative unfolds, Frederick Douglass—abolitionist, journalist, orator, and one of the most powerful voices to emerge from the American civil rights...