In a prefatory letter to his editor, Douglass claimed, with awkward falseness, that he had always possessed a “repugnance” to writing or speaking about himself, and to the “imputation of seeking personal notoriety for its own sake.” This odd disclaimer was a convention of the literary apologetics of that era, although ironic in a book that ended with a brilliant argument that human dignity depended directly upon public recognition. He could feel buttressed in his belief that words could shape and correct history. Only two years after publication, the same printing house issued a new edition with a banner, “Eighteen Thousand,” inscribed on the title page, indicating the number then in print.īondage and Freedom achieved what Douglass most wanted: readers and public impact. Douglass helped market the book by serializing parts of it in his paper, and in the next few years he sometimes took one or more of his sons out on the road with him to sell the book for $1 apiece at his public lectures. The sales were spectacular–five thousand copies in the first two days and fifteen thousand within three months. Douglass published it in August with Miller, Orton and Mulligan of Auburn, New York, at the price of $1.25. Her labors in the printing office in order to free his time to write certainly testify to her support, if not also her editorial hand in helping make the book possible. The British abolitionist Julia Griffiths still resided in Rochester, New York, and served as Douglass’s coeditor of his abolitionist newspaper Frederick Douglass’ Paper right up until her departure back to England in midsummer 1855. The 1855 book of 464 pages (four times longer than the Narrative) came from, as Douglass reminded readers in the first three chapter titles, an “Author” already free and ready to use literacy to engage in an epic argument with his country. Bondage and Freedom is not a mere updating of the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass of 1845 rather, it is an extensive revision of that one great tale Douglass believed he must tell–the story of himself.Ī quite different person–a much more mature, politicized writer–crafted Bondage and Freedom, as opposed to the twenty-seven-year-old orator of 1845 who needed to establish his identity through literacy.
In long form, it was the masterpiece of his writing life, a work that modern scholars have given a prominent place in the literary American renaissance.
Late in 1854, and especially during the first half of 1855, Frederick Douglass spent many weeks at his desk writing his ultimate declaration of independence, My Bondage and My Freedom, his second, more thorough and revealing autobiography.
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