My Bondage and My Freedom

About this book

Ten years after his famous Narrative, Frederick Douglass told his life again at much greater length. He describes his childhood on a Maryland plantation, where he was separated from his mother and raised by his grandmother; the cruelty he witnessed and suffered; how he learned to read in Baltimore; his fight with the 'slave-breaker' Edward Covey, which he calls the turning point of his life; his escape to the North in 1838; and his new life as a speaker against slavery, his travels in Britain and the founding of his own newspaper.

Context and significance

Douglass published the book in 1855, with an introduction by the Black physician James McCune Smith. It is a deeper and more reflective account than the first, written by a man who had become one of the great orators of his age. His first autobiography is the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.

About the author