Frederick Douglass

The Heroic Slave (1852) is a novella by Frederick Douglass. Although he is more frequently recognized as prominent orator and autobiographer who spearheaded the American abolitionist movement, Douglass published one work of fiction in his lifetime. Inspired by the 1841 Creole case, in which an enslaved cook and a crew of nineteen fellow-slaves led a rebellion onboard a ship bound from Virginia to New Orleans, The Heroic Slave seeks to highlight the...

"The Heroic Slave, a Thrilling Narrative of the Adventures of Madison Washington, in Pursuit of Liberty" is a short piece of fiction written by famous abolitionist Frederick Douglass. When the Rochester Ladies' Anti Slavery Society asked Douglass for a short story to go in their collection, Autographs for Freedom, Douglass responded in turn with The Heroic Slave. The novella, published in 1852 by John P. Jewett and Company, was Douglass' first and...

The preeminent American slave narrative first published in 1845, Frederick Douglass's Narrative powerfully details the life of the abolitionist form his birth into slavery to his escape to the North in 1838. Douglass tells how he endured the daily physical and spiritual brutalities of his owners and drivers, how he learned to read and write, and how he grew into a man who could only live free or die. In addition to Douglass's classic autobiography,...