Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself

With wood engravings by Barry Moser

FREDERICK DOUGLASS, an American slave, and later a statesman, orator, author and abolitionist, was born in 1818 in Tuckaho, Maryland. His journey from his birth to his emergence as a major American author is biblical in its scope and drama. As a boy he was kept mostly naked and always hungry. He was treated worse than the farm hogs, with whom slaves often vied for food., He endured whippings and torments until, one day, he stood up and fought back. He talks of Whites worrying that Blacks would take over the country-nearly two hundred years ago. Eventually Douglass learned to read, and from reading he wrote, and from writing he became a major force in the Abolitionist movement.

Specifications

Format: 7" x 10"" hardback on permanent paper, printed in the United States
Pages: 144
ISBN 10: 1-939995-41-4
ISBN 13: 978-1-939995-41-4
LCCN: 2022006142
Price: $25.00 (Bulk order rates are available upon request)

About the Book

Pennyroyal Press published a new edition of Frederick Douglass' Narrative of My Life as an American Slave in 2020 to mark the 175th anniversary of the Narrative's first appearance. It was printed letterpress by Tom Leech and James Bourland at the Press at the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in a limited edition of sixty copies. The typeface, Pennyroyal Book, was designed by David Jonathan Ross especially for Pennyroyal Press, appeared there for the first time to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first publication of the Press. The marbled end-sheet papers were created by Tom Leech. This book, printed by American History Press of Staunton, Virginia, is an exact facsimile of the limited edition, produced for the enjoyment of a wider audience.

The fourteen engravings in this book, originally printed directly from the blocks, were not designed to illustrate Frederick Douglass' Narrative as we ordinarily understand illustration. They comprise a visual meditation on slavery and its legacy, and are tied directly to only one of the incidents described in his memoir. About that Moser has written: "It seems to me that Douglass wasn't inclined to exposing the unvarnished horrors he saw and experienced to the polite, white, mid-nineteenth century New England society, his first readers. We do know from other accounts-most indeliibly from historic, contemporaneous photographs-much of the truth of what he must have witnessed through that unflinching eyewitness medium. And it was through those eye-witnessed photographic accounts, and my imagination, that I composed and engraved the images herein."

Illustration Selections

About the Illustrator

BARRY MOSER was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee in 1940. He was educated at Auburn University, the University of Chattanooga and the University of Massachusetts. His work is represented in The National Gallery of Art, Washington, The Metropolitan Museum, The Victoria and Albert Museum, The Pierpont Morgan Library, The Vatican Library, The National Library of Ireland, The Israel Museum, and n many other institutions and collections. He has exhibited internationally, and is a member of the Society of Printers, Boston, and an Academician of the National Academy of Design. In addition to being an illustrator, he is also a painter, printer, printmaker, designer, author, essayist, and teacher. He has served on the faculty of the Rhode Island School of Design; was the 1995 Whitney J. Oakes Fellow in Humanities at Princeton University and was the Third Flannery O'Connor Memorial Lecturer, Georgia State College, Milledgeville, Georgia in 2001. He is currently Irwin and Pauline ALper Glass Professor of Art at Smith College and is the Printer at the college.