3 Frederick Douglass first editions are documented on this shelf, from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845) to Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881) across 3 different publishers. Each linked guide gives the points of issue that separate a true first printing of that Frederick Douglass title from later printings and book-club copies — the publisher and year to expect, the number-line or edition-statement conventions, and the tells that show up in online listings.
Identification only, per the house rule: no prices and no appraisals here. Checking a Frederick Douglass copy in hand? Type the title into the First-Edition Checker or photograph the copyright page with Snap & Sort.
- Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave — 1845 · Anti-Slavery OfficeThe title page reads 'Boston: Published at the Anti-Slavery Office, No. 25 Cornhill, 1845.' The true first printing is a 12mo of pp. xvi, 125, bound in blind- and gilt-stamped brown cloth with the title in gilt on the spine, and it carries an engraved frontispiece portrait of Douglass seated with his hands crossed in his lap. The volume opens with a preface by William Lloyd Garrison, dated May 1, 1845, and a…. Boston, 1845, is the true first edition. Dublin printings by the abolitionist printer Richard D. Webb, adapted with Irish-specific abolitionist content, followed later in 1845 after Douglass's arrival in Ireland, with a further revised Dublin printing in early 1846; none of the Irish printings precede the Boston original. The Narrative sold roughly 5,000 copies in its first four months and went through six further American printings between 1845 and 1849; any copy lacking the original blind-and-gilt brown cloth and the plain 1845 Anti-Slavery Office title page -- including all 20th-century facsimile and paperback reprints -- is not the first edition.
- My Bondage and My Freedom — 1855 · Miller, Orton and MulliganThe title page imprint reads 'New York and Auburn: Miller, Orton and Mulligan, 1855,' reflecting the firm's dual offices. The first edition is an octavo of xxxi, [33]-464 pages, with an introduction by Dr. James McCune Smith and three engraved plates, including a frontispiece portrait of Douglass engraved by John Chester Buttre. The original publisher's binding is brown cloth, decorated in blind on the boards….
- Life and Times of Frederick Douglass — 1881 · Park Publishing Co.The true first printing's title page is set in 29 lines ending 'Hartford, Conn.: Park Publishing Co. 1881,' with no other cities listed below the imprint; a 31-line 1882 second printing adds the distributors Geo. M. Rewell & Co. of Cleveland, J. S. Goodman & Co. of Chicago, Sun Publishing Co. of St. Louis, and Phillips & Hunt of San Francisco beneath the Park Publishing Co. line. First-printing pagination runs…. Do not confuse the 1881 first edition (518pp., Park Publishing Co.) with the substantially revised and enlarged edition from De Wolfe, Fiske and Co. of Boston -- copyrighted 1892 but not issued until 1893 -- which expands the book to roughly 752 pages with a new 'Third Part' of thirteen additional chapters bringing the narrative up to date, the final three of which cover Douglass's 1889-91 service as U.S.….
More Nonfiction & Memoir shelves: Frederick Law Olmsted, Galileo Galilei, Gordon S. Wood, Hannah Arendt, Henry David Thoreau, Henry M. Stanley.
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