The subject of the latest volume in the series of "Beacon Biographies" is an old Western New Yorker–Frederick Douglass, the former slave, orator, and leader in the Abolition movement, who lived for 22 years in Rochester. The book is written by Charles W. Chesnutt, the Cleveland lawyer and author. Mr Chesnutt's first work was that of assistant to a teacher in negro schools in North Carolina, and later he was principal of the State Normal School at Fayetteville. His first story was published in a paper issued by a negro and he has had special opportunities to study the negro race in America. This experience has no doubt fitted him to write of Douglass with the sympathy which he shows.
The book resembles the others in the "Beacon" series. It is plain, lucid, devotes its space to the narration of fact and not to sermonizing, and its selection of facts is such as to show the career of its subject in the proper proportion. The book is an admirable short biography of Douglass. It has portrait, chronology and bibliography. (Boston: Small, Maynard & Co.