Britannica Sources used in this answer

How did Frederick Douglass revise his life story in My Bondage and My Freedom?

Created from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles.

Phillis Wheatley's first book of poetry — African American literature Frontispiece and title page of *Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral* (1773) by Phillis Wheatley, the first Black woman to become a poet of note in the United States. The portrait on which the frontispiece's engraving is based is often attributed to Scipio Moorhead, an Black artist and writer who, like Wheatley, was enslaved and living in Boston.

In his second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), Frederick Douglass significantly revised the narrative of his life compared to his 1845 Narrative.12

While his first autobiography focused on his individual journey as a self-made man who achieved freedom through a solitary pursuit of literacy and independence, My Bondage and My Freedom shifted this perspective. In this revised work, Douglass portrayed himself as a product of the slave community on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Furthermore, he expanded the scope of his story to explain that his struggle for liberty and independence did not conclude upon reaching the "free states" of the North, but rather continued as he faced the realities of Northern racism. This work is also noted for its complex authorial voice, which contributed to the novelization of the slave narrative tradition.12