My Bondage and Freedom.; Part I. - Life as a Slave. Part II. - Life as a Freeman

Introduction by Dr. James McCune Smith. Frontispiece portrait engraved by John Chester Buttre with facsimile signature, and 2 additional plates, all protected with tissue. xxxi, [2], 34-464 pages + 4 pages of ads. Small 8vo, original blind-stamped grayish cloth, spine ends are a bit frayed and the spine is lightly faded with one small stain). New York: Miller, Orton & Mulligan, 1855. First edition, later printing (fifteenth thousand), printed just months after the first issue. A very good(+) copy in collectible condition of Douglass's second autobiography and slave narrative. "My Bondage and My Freedom" was the second of three autobiographies penned by Douglass. Within two months, fifteen thousand copies of the book were sold. Almost three times the length of his first autobiography, "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass" (1845), "My Bondage" provides considerably more detail about Douglass' time enslaved and updates his story to include some of the major developments in his life since becoming a legally free man. The book also includes an appendix with extracts from some of Douglass notable speeches, including the essay "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" and his famous "Letter to His Old Master," which Douglass originally printed as an open letter to his former owner, Thomas Auld. -- Sabin 20714; Blockson 9717.…