He then became the slave of Colonel Lloyd’s chief butler, Captain Aaron Anthony and, like the other enslaved children, they placed him in the care of Aunt Katy-a mean kitchen slave. He lived, at first, with his grandparents in their cabin, which was a short distance from the plantation.

He spent the first seven or eight years of his life on the plantation of Colonel Edward Lloyd. He saw his mother sporadically while growing up. His use of the possessive pronoun “my” expresses his ownership of both experiences, even the enslavement imposed upon him.ĭouglass assumes that he was born in 1817 to an enslaved woman named Harriet. 'David Blight's graceful introduction provides the essential historical context, public as well as private, and helps us appreciate how Douglass's great book managed to be at once a piercing polemic, an extraordinary act of memory, and a masterpiece of American prose.Douglass divides the book into two periods-his life as a slave, and his life as a free man. Morris, Jr., Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives In this new edition, David Blight offers a fresh perspective on my great-great-great grandfather's life from his enslavement on the eastern shore of Maryland to his emergence as a revolutionary leader at the center of a national crisis over the future of slavery.'-Kenneth B. 'With scorching rhetoric, my heroic ancestor rails against the inhumanity of slavery while upholding the tenets of liberty with poetic elegance. This is an essential work in African-American and American history, and displays Douglass' developing strength as a writer and political leader.'-Richard Slotkin, Wesleyan University 'David Blight has produced a fine edition of Douglass' second autobiography. Blight situates the book within the politics of the 1850s and illuminates how My Bondage represents Douglass as a mature, confident, powerful writer who crafted some of the most unforgettable metaphors of slavery and freedom-indeed of basic human universal aspirations for freedom-anywhere in the English language. This classic is revisited with a new introduction and annotations by celebrated Douglass scholar David W. My Bondage and My Freedom is Douglass’s masterful recounting of his remarkable life and a fiery condemnation of a political and social system that would reduce people to property and keep an entire race in chains. This is an essential work in African-American and American history, and displays Douglass' developing strength as a writer and political leader.'-Richard Slotkin, Wesleyan Universityīorn into slavery in 1818, Frederick Douglass escaped to freedom and became a passionate advocate for abolition and social change and the foremost spokesperson for the nation’s enslaved African American population in the years preceding the Civil War.

My bondage and my freedom author