World Lit Reader

Frederick Douglass

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Read the struggle for literacy and freedom alongside Douglass’s examination of power, violence, religious hypocrisy, and the authority to tell one’s own story.

Begin readingContext and reading pathsRead and annotate

Contents

  1. Chapter I: Birth, Family, and First Knowledge of Slavery
  2. Chapter II: Colonel Lloyd's Plantation
  3. Chapter III: Wealth, Power, and Mastery
  4. Chapter IV: Overseers, Violence, and Moral Injury
  5. Chapter V: Childhood and Removal to Baltimore
  6. Chapter VI: Learning to Read
  7. Chapter VII: Literacy, Conscience, and Hope
  8. Chapter VIII: Inheritance, Valuation, and Separation
  9. Chapter IX: Master Thomas Auld and Religious Hypocrisy
  10. Chapter X: Covey, Resistance, and the Fight for Selfhood
  11. Chapter XI: Escape, New Bedford, and Public Witness
  12. Appendix: Christianity and Slaveholding Religion
  13. A Parody: The Hypocrisy of Pious Slaveholders

About this text

Frederick Douglass. Digital source: Project Gutenberg, ebook 23. This reading text follows the edition used in our interactive reader.

Includes Douglass’s eleven chapters and appendix, including its closing parody. The corpus uses descriptive chapter headings; prefatory letters by other authors are not included.

Use the contents to open a section with its own permanent link. The interactive reader offers passage exploration, notes, and saved quotations.