My Bondage and My Freedom

work by Douglass

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July 16, 2026

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My Bondage and My Freedom is a revised and expanded autobiography by Frederick Douglass, first published in 1855. It details his experiences as an enslaved person and his subsequent struggle for freedom and independence. The work builds upon his earlier narrative, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself, offering a more comprehensive account of his life and his continued fight against racism in the North. This book is a significant contribution to the slave narrative tradition in American literature, highlighting the pursuit of literacy and self-determination as central to liberation.123

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African American literature
Slave narratives
In his second, revised autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), Douglass depicted himself as a product of a slave community in Maryland’s Eastern Shore and explained how his struggles for independence and liberty did not end when he reached the so-called “free states” of the North. Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents…
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In his second, revised autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), Douglass depicted himself as a product of a slave community in Maryland’s Eastern Shore and explained how his struggles for independence and liberty did not end when he reached the so-called “free states” of the North. Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents…
Read More

slave narrative
…life story, Frederick Douglass wrote My Bondage and My Freedom in 1855, partly to recount his continuing struggle for freedom and independence against Northern racism. In 1861 Harriet Jacobs, the first African American female slave to author her own narrative, published Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, which…
Read More
…life story, Frederick Douglass wrote My Bondage and My Freedom in 1855, partly to recount his continuing struggle for freedom and independence against Northern racism. In 1861 Harriet Jacobs, the first African American female slave to author her own narrative, published Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, which…
Read More