Born into slavery in 1818, Frederick Douglass endured the daily physical and spiritual brutalities of his owners. Learning to read and write, he became a man who could only live free or die, and as he tells here, he made a perilous escape to the North at the age of 20. In addition to Douglass's classic 1845 autobiography, this new edition also includes his most famous speech, "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" and his only known work of fiction, "The Heroic Slave," which was written in response to Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin.