"THE MOST INFLUENTIAL AFRICAN AMERICAN OF THE 19TH CENTURY": RARE 1846 NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS, IN ORIGINAL CLOTH

DOUGLASS, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. Boston: Published at the Anti-Slavery Office, 1846. 12mo (5 by 7-1/2 inches), original blind- and gilt-stamped brown cloth; pp. (2), (i-iii), iv-xvi, (1), 2-125. Housed in a custom clamshell box.

Second edition of Douglass' powerful autobiography, issued only a year after the first, published soon after his escape from slavery, with engraved portrait of Douglass, exceedingly rare 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). Second edition: preceded by the very rare 1845 first edition. With engraved frontispiece portrait of Douglass. Sabin 20711. (1st edition) Blockson 9739. Work, 474. Contemporary gift inscription dated "47." Later owner inscription.

Interior generally fresh with light foxing mainly to preliminaries, occasional soiling, mild edge-wear mainly to spine ends of original cloth. A very good copy, rare in original cloth.