This essay reconstructs the publication history of the first French translation of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, which came out in Paris in 1848, three years after the book’s initial publication in Boston. It emphasizes the key role of British abolitionists Kate Parkes and John B. Estlin in translating Douglass’s Narrative and making it available to a French audience. It also documents the ‘non-reception’ of the book. Published in the politically volatile context of the February Revolution of 1848, Vie de Frédéric Douglass, esclave américain went largely unnoticed. The year that saw the abolition of slavery in the French colonial empire also saw the failure of Douglass’s Narrative in France.