Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is the first and most popular of three memoirs Frederick  Douglass wrote during his life. Published in 1845, it was among the first accounts written by slaves about their experience and was an influential work in stimulating the abolitionist movement prior to the civil war. The eleven chapters break into four sections. The first (1-4) deals with his earliest years and tells of his separation from his mother and the cruel treatment of slaves. The second (5-7) recounts his childhood struggles to learn to read and write and his growing awareness of the possibility of freedom. The third (8-9) chronicles his movements as a piece of property through numerous masters during his youth. In the last chapters (10-11) he beats a cruel master in a brawl, serves 2 years in prison for attempted escape, becomes an apprenticed tradesman, becomes engaged to a free black woman, and finally escapes to the north.  The book was a quick success, selling 5,000 copies in the first few months and 30,000 by 1860.  Ironically, the awareness it generated forced him to flee to England and Ireland to avoid being recaptured in the U.S., as prevailing laws required.  It was a revelation to much of the public that a former slave could be so literate and educated.  Margaret Fuller, a noted critic and reviewer, wrote "we have never read [a narrative] more simple, true, coherent, and warm with genuine feeling." That assessment stands to this day.

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