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Reader Responses, 1881-93

The following are contemporary published reviews of Life and Times of Frederick
Douglass located by the editors. Those lengthy passages excerpted from Life have
been abridged. Deleted passages are indicated by ellipses and by bracketed notations
of their page and line numbers in the Yale edition.

LITERARY. [Anon.]. Trenton Sentinel, 29 October 1881.

An excellent autobiography. Mr. Douglass has written much concerning him-
self, but nothing so full, complete and interesting as this. The introduction, by Geo.
L. Ruffin, of Boston, is a deserved and graceful tribute to Mr. Douglass' worth and
services. The mechanical execution is all that could be desired. Price, cloth, $2.50.
For sale by John T. Ray. Trenton. N.J.

FRED. DOUGLASS' LIFE. A REMARKABLE VOLUME OF ADVENTURE
AND REMINISCENCE. THE CAREER OF THE NEGRO PATRIOT AND
MARTYR. AS WRITTEN BY HIMSELF — THE INSTITUTION OF SLAVERY
AS A SLAVE KNEW IT. Erasmus. Philadelphia Press, 26 December 1881. Also
reprinted in Washington. D.C. National Republican, 31 December 1881.

NEW YORK, Dec. 23. — Every once in a while we hear of the extraordinary
success of a subscription book, yet I never knew a person who had ever bought one.
Indeed I do not know how people buy them who want them unless they happen to
run across an agent. Sometimes a subscription book finds its way into a bookstore,
but as a general thing they cannot be purchased in the ordinary way. They are seldom
sent to a paper for review, in truth the publishers prefer that they should not be
reviewed. Some time ago I sent THE PRESS a few extracts from Frederick
Douglass' account of his escape from slavery. That interesting paper was a chapter
printed in the Century Magazine, in advance of publication, from "The Life and
Times of Frederick Douglass," by himself. This volume was published a short time
after by a Hartford subscription book house, and I have been trying ever since to get
a copy, and have only just succeeded. It took as much wire-pulling and correspon-
dence as to get a Government position. No one had it but the agents, and no book-
seller knew who the agents were. I have just finished reading this autobiography, and
a remarkable one it is. Certainly Frederick Douglass is one of the most extraordinary
men of his time. Born in slavery, of a despised race, allowed to run wild as a child,
starved and beaten as a man, he managed to learn to read and write, this by the great-
est stealth, and finally to so educate himself that after his escape from slavery he
took rank among the orators of the day, and attained a position his "old master"

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