8vo (191 x 108 mm). Wood-engraved frontispiece portrait. (Closed tears in lower margin of portrait, discretely repaired on verso, light spotting and toning to frontispiece and title-page, a few corners creased, small corner tear to margin of final leaf.) Modern quarter calf, marbled boards (renewed endpapers, retaining front blank, corner repaired on recto).

"A legend in her own time, Truth's indomitable will has won her a permanent place in American history. Her evangelic fervor and plain wit helped to advance the causes of emancipation and women's rights" (Blockson).

SECOND EDITION. By the time the first edition appeared in 1850, Sojourner Truth had already emerged as a prominent abolitionist preacher and public speaker. Born into slavery in New York as Isabella Baumfree, she gained her freedom in 1827 and, in 1843, adopted the name Sojourner Truth after what she described as a divine calling to travel and “sojourn” the country speaking against slavery and injustice. By the mid-1840s, she had become associated with reform circles in Massachusetts, including the utopian and abolitionist Northampton Association of Education and Industry, where she met Olive Gilbert.

Inspired in part by the success of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Truth resolved to publish her own life story. As she was illiterate, she dictated the narrative to Gilbert, who served as amanuensis and editor. Though written largely in the third person, contemporaries clearly understood Truth to be the author of the work, with Gilbert acting only as recorder of her recollections. The first edition was printed in 1850 by Northampton printer J. B. Yerrinton, whom Truth persuaded to undertake the project largely on credit. The book quickly became an important tool in Truth’s activism. She personally financed, distributed, and sold copies while traveling and lecturing throughout the Northeast and Midwest, often offering the volume at the conclusion of her speeches. Continued demand led to the expanded second edition of 1853. Although reset, textually, the 1853 edition is substantially the same as the first edition. BAL 19381 (but different pagination with an introduction by Harriet Beecher Stowe); Blockson 29 (first edition); Howes G-163 (erroneously ascribing authorship to Gilbert, as common).