Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (John Harvard Library) (The John Harvard Library) - Softcover

Jacobs, Harriet A.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0674035836 ISBN 13: 9780674035836

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Synopsis

This enlarged edition of the most significant and celebrated slave narrative completes the Jacobs family saga, surely one of the most memorable in all of American history. John S. Jacobs's short slave narrative, A True Tale of Slavery, published in London in 1861, adds a brother's perspective to Harriet A. Jacobs's autobiography. It is an exciting addition to this now classic work, as John Jacobs presents further historical information about family life so well described already by his sister. Once more, Jean Fagan Yellin, who discovered this long-lost document, supplies annotation and authentication. This is the standard edition of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, reissued here in the John Harvard Library and updated with a new bibliography.

About this title

Review:

[Of] female slave narratives, Harriet Jacobs's "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself" is the crowning achievement. Manifesting a command of rhetorical and narrative strategies rivaled only by that of Frederick Douglass, Jacobs's autobiography is one of the major works of Afro-American literature...Jacobs's narrative is a bold and gripping fusion of two major literary forms: she borrowed from the popular sentimental novel on one hand, and the slave narrative genre on the other. Her tale gains its importance from the fact that she charts, in great and painful detail, the sexual exploitation that daily haunted her life--and the life of every other black female slave...Ms. Yellin's superbly researched edition ensures that Harriet Jacobs will never be lost again.--Henry Louis Gates, Jr. "New York Times Book Review "

From the Back Cover:

These two slave narratives expand our knowledge of the differing ways males and females coped with enslavement and later ordeals in flight. This popularly–priced anthology contains the often taught Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs and the recently discovered A True Tale of Slavery by John S. Jacobs, her younger brother, now reprinted for the first time.

After Harriet s owner, a physician, repeatedly abused her, she escaped his sexual advances for a time by entering into a relationship with a local attorney. Her owner continued to harass her, and she sought refuge in a crawlspace where she lived in hiding. After her escape to the North, she published her narrative.

John S. Jacobs walked away as he put it, from his owner, a congressman. He sailed on a whaling ship and educated himself. He then became a paid agent of the Anti–Slavery Society, made a lecturing trip with Frederick Douglass, and finally settled in London, where he remained until it was safe for a fugitive to return to the North. He wrote his story for a London Sunday school journal where it was published in 1861.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• ISBN 10: 0674035836
• ISBN 13: 9780674035836
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 384