It is 'a rich resource for his biographers, as well as for historians of slavery, abolitionism, and the politics of race in 18th-century American culture,' and features an appendix with his 1876 Oration on the unveiling of the Freedmen's Monument honoring Lincoln ( Cambridge Companion, 31-39). Here 'Douglass revealed for the first time the details of his harrowing escape from slavery in September 1838' (McKivigan, Frederick Douglass Papers, xiv). Life and Times, his third and final autobiography, was published less than ten years after his personal papers and library were destroyed in a fire. Ferguson's decision legalized segregation in its 'separate but equal' doctrine. Born a slave when Jefferson was still alive, he escaped slavery in 1838, and died in 1895, only one year before the Supreme Court's infamous Plessy v. 'The history of 19th-century America cannot be told without reference to slavery… nor can the history of African Americans be told without reference to Douglass' writings' ( Cambridge Companion, 2). Housed in a custom clamshell box.įirst edition of Douglass' first post-bellum memoir and final autobiography, revealing 'for the first time the details of his harrowing escape from slavery,' with engraved frontispiece portrait and 17 engraved plates, in original gilt-stamped cloth. Octavo, original blind-stamped maroon cloth, all edges gilt pp. His Early Life as a Slave, His Escape from Bondage, And His Complete History to the Present Time. Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, Written by Himself.

'THE MOST INFLUENTIAL AFRICAN AMERICAN OF THE 19TH CENTURY': FIRST EDITION OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS' LIFE AND TIMES, 1881ĭOUGLASS, Frederick.

Life and times of frederick douglass