Title page from The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass: From 1817-1882

The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass: From 1817-1882

Douglass’s third and last autobiography of his life as a slave, runaway, and then campaigner for the abolition of slavery. This edition is interesting because of the introduction by one of Britain’s leading classical liberal reformers, John Bright.

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Key Quotes

Colonies, Slavery & Abolition

I AM now at the beginning of the year—1836—when the mind naturally occupies itself with the mysteries of life in all its phases—the ideal, the real, and the actual. Sober people look both ways at the beginning of a new year, surveying the errors of the past, and providing against the possible…

Women’s Rights

Observing woman’s agency, devotion, and efficiency in pleading the cause of the slave, gratitude for this high service early moved me to give favourable attention to the subject of what is called “Woman’s Rights,” and caused me to be denominated a woman’s-rights-man. I am glad to say I have never…

Colonies, Slavery & Abolition

Although slavery was a delicate subject, and very cautiously talked about among grown-up people in Maryland, I frequently talked about it, and that very freely, with the white boys. I would sometimes say to them, while seated on a curbstone or a cellar door, “I wish I could be free, as you will be…

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