'I Was Transformed' Frederick Douglass: An American Slave in Victorian Britain

by Laurence Fenton

In the summer of 1845, Frederick Douglass, the young runaway slave catapulted to fame by his incendiary autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, arrived in Liverpool for the start of a near-two-year tour of Britain and Ireland he always called one of the most transformative periods of his life. Laurence Fenton draws on a wide array of sources from both sides of the Atlantic and combines a unique insight into the early years of one of the great figures of the nineteenth-century world with rich profiles of the enormous personalities at the heart of the transatlantic anti-slavery movement. This vivid portrait of life in Victorian Britain is the first to fully explore the ‘liberating sojourn’ that ended with Douglass gaining his freedom – paid for by British supporters – before returning to America as a celebrity and icon of international standing. It also follows his later life, through the American Civil War and afterwards.Douglass has been described as ‘the most influential African American of the nineteenth century’. He spoke and wrote on behalf of a variety of reform causes: women’s rights, temperance, peace, land reform, free public education and the abolition of capital punishment. But he devoted most of his time, immense talent and boundless energy to ending slavery. On April 14, 1876, Douglass would deliver the keynote speech at the unveiling of the Emancipation Memorial in Washington’s Lincoln Park.

304 pages, Hardcover

Published February 15, 2018

Reviews

[Geoff Boxell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating read.
This is the story of how an escaped American slave made his way to the UK where he became a popular public speaker on the wrongs of slavery still being practiced in the USA, long after it had ceased to exist in the British Empire, and attempt to get the British public to pressurise the American Government to lso ban slavery.
There are many things that stand out: Frederick Douglass' amazement at being treated as just another human being, the willingness of many British establishment figures to help the cause, the efforts needed to get abolition back in the British public eye after the Empire had already freed its slaves, the internal politics and splits within the anti-slavery movement, especially in America, the long lasting friendships Douglass formed with many of his British contacts, Douglass' courage and determination to see slavery in America end and his struggles to see black Americans treated as equals by their fellow white American citizens.
This book should be a must read in every American school, though I doubt it ever will be.
Four stars? It can, in parts, be just a list of times and places with a style that can be a mite dry. I also got put off by two obvious errors, small though they be: Hans Christian Andersen is said to be Swedish, when he was Danish and Bridport is in Dorset, not Devon. This rises the question of how many other small errors, on facts that I am not familiar with, are contained in the scrip? But, the topic of the book is such as fasinating man with such a wonderful tale I can only drop a single star.

[Susie James · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this biography, as I had one about Sarah Childress Polk, wife of James Knox Polk, listed in a Daedalus Books catalog and ordered it. I read "Lady First" (that catalog had hit my rural dwelling via Fed Ex earlier) first, and the times of which it spoke so to speak were similar to those in which Frederick (Bailey) Douglass lived were roughly the same. Different sides of the cultural and political bed, one might say. Differing depths of exploration and writing, as well. I think Laurence Fenton's "'I Was Transformed'" did a decent and interesting work -- would recommend it. "Lady First" is interesting also, though its writer certainly exhibited some predispositions and prejudices in my opinion.