The Oxford Frederick Douglass Reader

About this book

The Oxford Frederick Douglass Reader collects in one volume the most outstanding and representative work from Frederick Douglasss fifty-year writing career including all the major genres in which he worked: autobiography journalism oratory and fiction. The Reader contains the following classic texts in their entirety: the landmark fugitive slave narrative Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass An American Slave (1845); the consummate anti-slavery oration "What To the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" (1852); the pioneering novella The Heroic Slave (1853); and the magisterial analysis of lynching Lessons of the Hour (1894). Generous selections from Douglasss second autobiography My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) illustrate his boldly revisionist personal and political agenda while major chapters from both the 1881 and the 1892 editions of the final autobiography Life and Times of Frederick Douglass reveal the authors perspective on his own successes and his estimate of the nations progress on the racial front in the post-war era. Also included are notable examples of Douglasss journalism in which he advocated womens rights and black enlistment in the Civil War. In addition the private as well as the public Douglass finds a voice in the Reader as he responds to criticism of his decision to choose a white woman as his second wife and also discloses his carefully guarded views of religion through a little-known 1886 letter. Editor William L. Andrews has provided an introduction and headnotes that give basic accessible information regarding Douglasss life writing purposes and the reception of his texts offering a thoughtful review of the crucial developments in Douglasss multiple careers as autobiographer journalist lecturer and racial spokesman. The Oxford Frederick Douglass Reader provides students and readers with the most complete diverse and personally revealing record available of nineteenth-century black Americas most celebrated writer.