Criticism > Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism > Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself, Frederick Douglass - David W. Blight (essay date 1993)


Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself, Frederick Douglass - David W. Blight (essay date 1993)

David W. Blight (essay date 1993)

SOURCE: Blight, David W. “Introduction: ‘A Psalm of Freedom.’” In Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself, edited by David W. Blight, pp. 1-23. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press, 1993.

[In the following introduction, Blight provides an overview of the composition and reception of Douglass's Narrative.]

Memory was given to man for some wise purpose. The past is … the mirror in which we may discern the dim outlines of the future and by which we may make them more symmetrical.

—Frederick Douglass, 1884

Therefore I will not refrain my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.

—Job 7:11

Frederick Douglass was the most important African American leader and intellectual of the nineteenth century. He...

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