title: Escape from Slavery: The Boyhood of Frederick Douglass in His Own Words
author:  Frederick Douglass 
description: In her brief foreword to this significant book, an abridgment of the first of three autobiographies penned by the one-time slave and abolitionist, Coretta Scott King notes that her late husband was "inspired and deeply moved" by Douglass's account of his early years. It is easy to see why, for the reader becomes utterly involved in Douglass's eloquent, quietly passionate account of his life as a young slave. Born in Maryland around 1817, Douglass lived on a plantation with his grandparents until the age of six, when he was sent to Baltimore. He served a variety of masters, working intermittently in the city and on farms, and vacillated between feeling "wearied in body and broken in spirit" and being fiercely determined to flee to freedom. Douglass's dream was realized in 1838, when he escaped to the North and found work as a caulker in New Bedford, Mass. The preservation of Douglass's original vocabulary, spelling and punctuation lends this trenchant account a formality unfamiliar to today's youngsters, yet the passage of 150 years has not rendered it any less immediate or piercing. McCurdy's distinctive woodcuts emphasize his subjects' vulnerability and their dignity. Ages 9-up. <br />Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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  Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  By Frederick Douglass
  
  
  
  
  
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  Biography of Frederick Douglass
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Frederick Douglass changed into one of the finest writers, orators,
  abolitionists, reformers, and polemicists of the nineteenth century. Born into
  slavery in Talbot County, Maryland round 1818, Douglass finally escaped to
  freedom in 1838. He did no longer recognize the identification of his father
  and did no longer have a near courting with his mother. The earliest years of
  his life had been spent together with his first master, Captain Anthony, a
  fairly wealthy slaveholder. Douglass lived on the primary plantation of
  Colonel Lloyd, one of Maryland's wealthiest guys. In a fortuitous flip of
  events, Douglass was dispatched to Baltimore to live with Anthony's son-in-
  regulation's brother and his wife. There Douglass taught himself the way t