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Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.
Rochester: Published at the North Star Office, 1848. Small 8vo (6.125" x 4.25"), original half calf and printed green paper over boards, gilt rules at spine. xvi, 125, [1, blank] pp. CONDITION: Good, covers damp-stained and heavily foxed throughout, but a sound, tight volume with no structural issues. Rare third edition, second state, bound and issued by Douglass at his North Star Press in Rochester, consisting of sheets from the third edition (Boston, 1847), but issued without the frontispiece. Following the initial publication of his Narrative in Boston in 1845, which revealed much about his origins and received wide circulation, Douglass feared that his “owner,” Thomas Auld, might “take measures for my restoration to his ‘patriarchal care,’” and was compelled to leave the United States on a speaking tour of the British Isles. He returned in 1847, now a free man thanks to the beneficence of abolitionist friends in England, and soon established his newspaper, The North Star, in Rochester. Having obtained the remaining sheets of the third edition of the Narrative, he published the present edition with his imprint on the front cover, while the title page remained the same, bearing the Boston Anti-Slavery Office imprint of 1847. It is the only known book published by the North Star Office and must have been printed in considerably smaller numbers than the editions published in Boston, as it is far less frequently encountered. OCLC records just seven copies, at Harvard, Princeton, Emory, Northern Illinois University, University of Delaware, AAS (lacking the title page) and the University of Michigan. A rare and important edition of Frederick Douglass’s Narrative, representing his early efforts as an independent publisher.
Item #10496
Price: $35,000.00
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