The key to the originality and import of Douglass's rendition of his life, in contrast to that of most other fugitive slave narrators, is his emphasis on the psychological and intellectual struggle that he waged against slavery from his early childhood on Maryland's Eastern Shore. The self-consciousness of the writing in the Narrative attests to Douglass's determination to make his story not merely an exposé of the evils of slavery but also an exploration of the mind of a slave aspiring to freedom. The fact that the Narrative bore the subtitle “Written by Himself” witnessed powerfully to the capacity of the African American, even when oppressed through years of slavery, to speak eloquently on his own behalf against social and economic injustice. Sales were helped greatly by positive reviews that compared Douglass's style to that of John Bunyan and Daniel Defoe.

In 1846, a Dutch translation and in 1848, a French translation of the Narrative helped spread Douglass's fame on the European continent. By 1850 approximately thirty thousand copies of the Narrative had been sold in the United States and Great Britain. To satisfy demand, four additional reprintings of two thousand copies each were brought out within a year.

Priced at fifty cents a copy, the Narrative's first printing of five thousand sold out in four months. The epitome of the antebellum fugitive slave narrative, Frederick Douglass's Narrative was published in May 1845 by the American Anti-Slavery Society of Boston.

Douglass narrative of the life