Frederick Douglass Collection, The: A Library of America Boxed Set (Library of America: The Frederick Douglass Collection) - Hardcover

Frederick Douglass; Henry Louis Gates Jr.; Davi Blight

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1598537695 ISBN 13: 9781598537697

Publisher: Library Of America, 2024

Synopsis

For more than five decades, from the antebellum period through the Civil War and Reconstruction and into the Gilded Age, Frederick Douglass used his voice and wielded his pen in support of abolition and emancipation, equal rights, and human dignity, developing a prophetic style suffused with scriptural cadences and a fierce moral urgency. This deluxe boxed set gathers both volumes of the Library of America's definitive edition of his collected writings. Autobiographies, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., presents all 3 of Douglass's landmark memoirs: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845), a powerfully compressed account of the cruelty and oppression of the Maryland plantation culture into which Douglass was born and of his escape to freedom. My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), in which Douglass expands the account of his slave years with astonishing psychological penetration. Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, first published in 1881 and revised in 1893, recounting Douglass's efforts to keep alive the struggle for racial equality in the years following the Civil War. Speeches & Writings, edited by Pulitzer Prize winning biographer David W. Blight, is the largest single-volume edition of Douglass's writings ever published, presenting 34 speeches and 67 pieces of journalism, among them such classic works as: 'What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?,' Douglass's incandescent skewering of the slaveholding republic. 'There Was a Right Side in the Late War,' a scathing rebuke of the push to rewrite the history of the Civil War. The still timely 'Lessons of the Hour,' about lyncing and the emergence of Jim Crow. It includes as a special feature the 1853 novella 'The Heroic Slave,' Douglass's lone work of fiction.

About this title

About the Author

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) was born Frederick Bailey in eastern Maryland, the son of an enslaved mother and an unknown white man. In 1838 he escaped to the North and took the name Douglass. During the next decade he became an antislavery speaker, achieved international fame with?Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,?the first of his three autobiographies, and began publishing a series of newspapers. Douglass continued his impassioned advocacy for freedom and racial equality until the end of his life. 

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard. He is the author of numerous books, including?Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow, and has produced, written, and hosted an array of documentary films for public television, including?Finding Your Roots and?The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross. 

David W. Blight is Sterling Professor of American History at Yale University and the author of?Frederick Douglass: Prophet of American Freedom, which was awarded the Bancroft Prize, the Francis Parkman Prize, and the Pulitzer Prize. His other works include?Frederick Douglass’ Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee and?Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory.?

Edition details

• Publisher: Library Of America
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1598537695
• ISBN 13: 9781598537697
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 2097