Track Section Duration
01 00 - Preface 20:33
02 01 - Letter from Wendell Phillips, Esq. 6:57
03 02 - Chapter I 11:56
04 03 - Chapter II 12:39
05 04 - Chapter III 9:03
06 05 - Chapter IV 9:47
07 06 - Chapter V 9:49
08 07 - Chapter VI 7:47
09 08 - Chapter VII 13:38
10 09 - Chapter VIII 11:17
11 10 - Chapter IX 12:24
12 11 - Chapter X: Part I 33:58
13 12 - Chapter X: Part II 39:30
14 13 - Chapter XI 30:09
15 14 - Appendix 13:11

Notes
Running Time: 4 hours and 3 minutes
Read by: Jesse Zuba
Book Coordinator: MaryAnn
Meta Coordinators: DaveC

Artwork
Cover: Frederick Douglass c. 1879, author unknown.  National Archives and Records Administration.
Inset: Title page from the 1845 edition of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave.
Insert: Portrait of Frederick Douglass as a younger man, 1855, Frontispiece: Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom: Part I- Life as a Slave, Part II- Life as a Freeman, with an introduction by James M'Cune Smith. New York and Auburn: Miller, Orton & Mulli.

Recordings
These recordings were made using the author’s original published work, which is in the public domain. The readings were recorded by members and volunteers of Librivox.org, which has generously made the recordings available to the public domain. The audio files have been lightly edited and have been engineered using professional audio tools for maximum sonic quality. While Librivox condones the sale and distribution of these recordings, it is not associated with the management or operations of MP3 Audiobook Classics.  


Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is the first and most popular of three memoirs Frederick  Douglass wrote during his life. Published in 1845, it was among the first accounts written by slaves about their experience and was an influential work in stimulating the abolitionist movement prior to the civil war. The eleven chapters break into four sections. The first (1-4) deals with his earliest years and tells of his separation from his mother and the cruel treatment of slaves. The second (5-7) recounts his childhood struggles to learn to read and write and his growing awareness of the possibility of freedom. The third (8-9) chronicles his movements as a piece of property through numerous masters during his youth. In the last chapters (10-11) he beats a cruel master in a brawl, serves 2 years in prison for attempted escape, becomes an apprenticed tradesman, becomes engaged to a free black woman, and finally escapes to the north.  The book was a quick success, selling 5,000 copies in the first few months and 30,000 by 1860.  Ironically, the awareness it generated forced him to flee to England and Ireland to avoid being recaptured in the U.S., as prevailing laws required.  It was a revelation to much of the public that a former slave could be so literate and educated.  Margaret Fuller, a noted critic and reviewer, wrote "we have never read [a narrative] more simple, true, coherent, and warm with genuine feeling." That assessment stands to this day.


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Item Info
EAN - DVD case 0683422134692
EAN - CD jacket 0682550992846
Media MP3 CD
Package DVD Box
Author Frederick Douglass (1818 - 1895)
Year 1845
Recording
Read by Jesse Zuba
Length 4 hours and 3 minutes
Type of Reading Solo

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Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

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