The illustrated version of America's most famous autobiography. Famous orator and former slave Frederick Douglass wrote the Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, an 1845 memoir and treatise on the abolition of slavery. In describing the facts of his life in clear and concise prose, he fueled the abolitionist movement of the early nineteenth century in the United States. In this seminal work, Douglass details the cruelty of slave holders, how slaves were supposed to behave in the presence of their masters, the fear that kept many slaves where they were, and the punishments received by any slave who dared to tell the truth about their treatment. He learned to read and write while still a slave but also suffered at the hands of whites. He was starved, worked the fields until he collapsed, was beaten for collapsing, was jailed for two years after planning an escape attempt, and nearly lost his left eye in an attack while he was an apprentice in a shipyard. Douglass succeeded in escaping to the North and finding his own freedom but kept many details of his journey a secret to protect those who helped him and, hopefully, allow others to escape. Augmented by large sidebars written by soldiers, statesmen, and abolitionists from the antebellum period, as well as pieces by well-known historians and prominent African-Americans, and some new pieces by current historians and writers, this richly illustrated edition of this classic American autobiography sheds new light on Douglass's famous text for a new generation of readers.

Author Biography

FREDERICK DOUGLASS was an African American social reformer, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery, he became a leader of the abolitionist movement, gaining note for his dazzling oratory and incisive antislavery writing. He is one of the most famous African Americans of all time and his memoirs continue to be studied by historians and enthusiasts today, nearly 150 years after the Civil War. Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He hearned his BA in English language and literature, summa cum laude, from Yale University and his MA and PhD in English literature from Clare Collage at the University of Cambridge. An Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar, journalist, cultural critic, and institution builder, Gates has authored or co-authored nineteen books and created fourteen documentary films. Having written for such leading publications as the New Yorker, the New York Times, and Time, he now serves as chairman of theRoot.com, a daily online magazine he co-founded in 2008.