My Bondage and My Freedom (Penguin Classics) - Softcover

Douglass, Frederick

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140439188 ISBN 13: 9780140439182

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2003

Written ten years after his legal emancipation, MY BONDAGE AND MY FREEDOM catapulted Frederick Douglass into the international spotlight as a leading spokesperson for American blacks, both freed and in slavery. This, Douglass's second autobiography, was written during his celebrated career as a speaker and newpaper editor, and reveals a mature and forceful character utterly committed to the fight for equal rights and liberties.

Review:

"My Bondage and My Freedom, besides giving a fresh impulse to antislavery literature, [shows] upon its pages the untiring industry of the ripe scholar."--William Wells Brown

From the Back Cover:

"I have never placed my opposition to slavery on a basis so narrow as my own enslavement, but rather upon the indestructible and unchangeable laws of human nature, every one of which is perpetually and flagrantly violated by the slave system." -- Frederick Douglass
Born and brought up in slavery, Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) experienced the horrors of bondage but gained freedom and world renown as a lecturer, editor, and one of the most important men behind the American abolitionist movement. This book is the deeply moving story of his life -- as a slave, and as a free man.Douglass wrote three autobiographies, of which the 1855 edition is the most detailed on his life as a slave. In it, readers are not spared the fullest and most graphic descriptions of the cruelty of slavery. Douglass describes his life on a Maryland plantation: the excitement and danger of teaching himself to read and write, his demoralization under a cruel master, and his daring escape.In the second part of his tale, Douglass, now a fugitive, settles in Massachusetts and joins the anti-slavery movement. He recounts his travels to the British Isles and his first taste of freedom without prejudice, and his return to America to work as spokesman for his oppressed people. In addition to recording his sufferings and his protests, Douglass also provides a keen analysis of the effects of slavery on its victims as well as on society at large.

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0140439188
• ISBN 13: 9780140439182
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 432