Born into slavery in Maryland, Frederick Douglass escaped bondage to become an abolitionist leader, orator and politician, and one of the most famous African-Americans of the 19th century.

His autobiographical Narrative – an immediate bestseller in 1845 – was soon acknowledged as a pivotal text in the struggle against slavery. In this moving and beautifully written account, he lays bare a system that brutalised everyone it touched. Douglass tells of his childhood and youth under a succession of slaveholders, his secret efforts to gain an education, his dawning political consciousness and his determination to escape.