The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is an excellent and famous example of a genre of writing that had great significance in the 19th-century United States: the slave narrative. Slave narratives were autobiographical accounts written by former slaves of their upbringing and life as slaves, as well as their eventual escape from slavery. Some scholars estimate that there are several hundred thousand such narratives that have been produced in total, if one counts the United States along with other countries where slavery existed.
Douglass's narrative is an especially significant one because of how remarkably intelligent and eloquent he was at a time when black people were...
