description: Frederick Douglass was born into slavery as Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey in Maryland. As a young boy he was sent to Baltimore, to be a house servant, where he learned to read and write, with the assistance of his master's wife. In 1838 he escaped from slavery and went to New York City, where he married Anna Murray, a free colored woman whom he had met in Baltimore. Soon thereafter he changed his name to Frederick Douglass. In 1841 he addressed a convention of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in Nantucket and so greatly impressed the group that they immediately employed him as an agent. He was such an impressive orator that numerous persons doubted if he had ever been a slave, and he wrote this classic book about his life story.
language: English
title: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave
titlecomplete: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave
characters: Frederick Douglass
genres: Biography, Memoir, Nonfiction, School, Classics, Autobiography, American History, Race, History, African American
ratings_count: 119355
places: Maryland, The United States of America
series: Voices of the African Diaspora, The Autobiographies
publisher: FQ Classics