My Bondage And My Freedom

This book is the deeply moving and stirring story of Frederick Douglass's 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, the reader is not spared the fullest and most graphic description of the cruel and inhuman treatment of slaves, and the total disregard for them as human beings. Beginning with his earliest childhood, he describes the painful separation from his grandmother; slave life on a Maryland plantation; the excitement and danger of teaching himself how to read and write; his growing awareness and frustration while living and working in Baltimore.

In his third autobiography, American abolitionist, editor, orator, author, statesman, and reformer Frederick Douglass reflected upon his life, observing that he had lived several lives in one: first, the life of slavery; secondly, the life of a fugitive from slavery; thirdly, the life of comparative freedom; fourthly, the life of conflict and battle; and fifthly, the life of victory, if not complete, at least assured."