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Dear Readers,
Douglass’ Women is an imaginative rendering of two women in Frederick Douglass’s life — his wife, Anna Murray Douglass, and his mistress of twenty-eight years, Ottilie Assing. While Douglass has justifiably been famous for over a century, Aanna and Ottilie have been obscured by a history that diminished their significance. I wanted to ask: What might it have felt like to live as the Black wife or the white mistress of Frederick Douglass? “Who was Anna? Who was Ottilie?”
As a novelist, “was” becomes “is.” I had to re-imagine two very different women, shaping
the raw materials of history into living characters. My goal was not to rewrite fact, but to
illuminate emotional possibilities — to encourage empathy and curiosity in readers.
My research revealed Anna as a free Black woman from Maryland who helped finance
Douglass’s escape, sewed his disguise, and maintained their home and children
through years of travel and danger. Illiterate in a culture where literacy symbolized
liberation, she fascinated me. I imagined her silence as an assertion that caregiving,
labor, and survival were their own forms of power — a quiet resistance to being
measured by her husband’s intellectual standards.
Ottilie Assing was a surprise to me. A German intellectual deeply engaged in abolitionist
and suffragist causes, she translated Douglass’s work and championed his message
abroad. Brilliant and idealistic, she saw herself as his intellectual equal and remained
bound to him by romantic conviction. Her written voice — letters, journals, essays —
contrasted with Anna’s oral storytelling, reflecting the different traditions shaping their
identities.
The absence of Anna and Ottilie from Douglass’s own accounts compelled me to write. I
wanted to lift the veil that shrouded these two women in history. Now, more than two
decades after its original publication, this reissued edition reflects the enduring cultural
relevance of examining overlooked voices and re-centering the stories history leaves
untold.
I hope Douglass’ Women sparks discussion about love, power, identity, and historical
memory. Ultimately, this novel is my tribute to two women whose lives were entwined
with a man who helped change a nation — and whose own influence deserves to be
remembered.
Warmly,
Jewell Parker Rhodes
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