Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself is the most relevant nineteenth-century slave narrative written by a former male slave, and a highly influential work for the anti-slavery movement. It was Douglass' first autobiography and in it he describes his triumphant progress from slavery to freedom and makes it parallel to his liberating journey from illiteracy to literacy. As such, is a powerful illustration of a black man's ambition to be free in the land of the free.