Critical Insights: Frederick Douglass

As a former slave who became a powerful writer, orator, rhetorician, social critic, and abolitionist leader, Frederick Douglass is one of nineteenth-century America's most important figures. This essay collection focuses on Douglass' contributions to American and African American literature. In addition to offering new perspectives of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Written by Himself, this volume contains critical essays about "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?," The Heroic Slave, and Douglass' later autobiographies. It also considers Douglass' writings alongside the works of his contemporaries and explores his continuing literary legacy in the global twenty-first century.