"THE MOST INFLUENTIAL AFRICAN AMERICAN OF THE 19TH CENTURY": NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS, 1845 FIRST EDITION IN ORIGINAL CLOTH

DOUGLASS, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. Boston: Published at the Anti-Slavery Office, 1845. 12mo (4-3/4 by 7 inches), original blind- and gilt-stamped brown cloth; pp. xvi, 125. Housed in a custom chemise and clamshell box. $38,000.

First edition of Douglass' powerful autobiography, published only seven years after his escape from slavery, with engraved portrait of Douglass, an excellent copy in original cloth.

"The history of African Americans cannot be told without reference to Douglass' writings" (Cambridge Companion, 2). "The most influential African American of the 19th century, Douglass… understood that the struggle for emancipation and equality demanded forceful, persistent, and unyielding agitation… Less than a month before his death, when a young black man solicited his advice to an African American just starting out in the world, he replied without hesitation: 'Agitate! Agitate! Agitate!'" Douglass wrote his Narrative (later expanded into My Bondage and My Freedom, 1855) after escaping from slavery in 1838. He spent several years lecturing for antislavery societies, a time during which he was "often subjected to verbal assaults, barrages of rotten eggs and vegetables and mob violence. And, as a fugitive slave, his growing visibility placed him in constant danger" (ANB). William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips, who respectively wrote the preface and an introduction to this edition, "had advised Douglass to burn the manuscript unless he would be recaptured and enslaved again," but he chose to answer those fears with this autobiography, a volume that is "probably the best known narrative of the ante-bellum period" (Blockson, 27). Douglass' Narrative is a "masterpiece of American literary art… without peer" (Houston A. Baker, Jr). With engraved frontispiece portrait of Douglass. Sabin 20711. Blockson 9739. Work, 474. Brignano 432.

Interior generally fresh with only light occasional soiling, expert reinforcement to text block and inner hinges; mere trace of rubbing to bright gilt cloth. A very good copy, exceedingly rare in unrestored original cloth.