The pre-eminent American slave narrative. Published in 1845, this autobiography powerfully details the life of the internationally famous abolitionist Frederick Douglass 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 drivers, how he learned to read and write, and how he grew into a man who could only live free or die. In his introduction, Houston A. Baker, Jr., discusses the slave narrative as a distinct American literary genre and points out its social, political, historical, and literary significance, past and present.

Enriched eBook Features Editors Houston Baker and Derrick R. Spires provides the following specially commissioned features for this Enriched eBook Classic:

• Chronology
• Nineteenth-Century Reviews and Responses
• Further Reading
• Day in a Slave’s Life
• Sorrow Songs and Sheet Music
• “The Church and Prejudice” (1841)
• Introduction to “Oration,” or “The Meaning of the Fourth of July for the Negro”
• “The Meaning of the Fourth of July for the Negro” (1852)
• Introduction to “The Heroic Slave”
• “The Heroic Slave” (1853)
• “My Escape from Slavery” (1881)
• Douglass Sites to Visit in the United States
• Portraits and Illustrations
• Enriched eBook Notes

The enriched eBook format invites readers to go beyond the pages of these beloved works and gain more insight into the life and times of an author and the period in which the book was originally written for a rich reading experience.