Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Browse Return to Previous Page       Related Subjects African American History All Subjects History

by Harriet A. Jacobs

Dover Publications

Due/Published November 2001, 176 pages, paper

ISBN 0486419312

A haunting, evocative recounting of her life as a slave in North Carolina, and of her final escape and emancipation, Jacobs' classic narrative, written between 1853 and 1858 and published in 1861, tells firsthand of the horrors inflicted on slaves. In writing this extraordinary memoir, which culminates in the seven years she spent hiding in a crawl space in her grandmother's attic, Jacobs skillfully used the literary genres of her times, presenting a thoroughly feminist narrative that portrays the evils and traumas of slavery, particularly for women and children. Now with an introduction by renowned historian Nell Irvin Painter, this edition also includes A True Tale of Slavery, the brief memoir of Harriet Jacobs' brother, John S. Jacobs, originally published in a London periodical in 1861.

Harriet Jacobs (c. 1813-1897) was born in Edenton, North Carolina, and taught to read and sew by one of her owners after her mother's death in about 1819. A fervent reader and ardent abolitionist, she originally published Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl in 1861, under the pseudonym Linda Brent.
Nell Irvin Painter is Edwards Professor of History at Princeton University, where she currently heads the program in African-American Studies. She is the author of several acclaimed books and editor of the Penguin Classics edition of the Narrative of Sojourner Truth.