This enlarged edition of the most significant and celebrated slave narrative now completes the Jacobs family saga, surely one of the most memorable in all of American history. John Jacobs's short slave narrative, A True Tale of Slavery,published in London in 1861, adds a brother's perspective to Harriet Jacobs's own autobiography. It is an exciting addition to this now classic work, as John Jacobs presents additional historical information about family life so well described already by his sister. Importantly, it presents the people, places, and events Harriet Jacobs wrote about from the different perspective of a male narrator. Once more, Jean Yellin, who discovered this long-lost document, supplies annotation and authentication. She has also brought her Introduction up to date.

This may be the most important story ever written by a slave woman, capturing as it does the gross indignities as well as the subtler social arrangements of the time. An introduction is invaluable in clarifying many incidents and personalities...The author writes with passion and insight into the peculiar institution of slavery. Her writing, modern in several respects, prefigures many of the developments in the later literature of the South.

[Of] female slave narratives, Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herselfis 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.

'[The book] is a major work in the canon of writing by Afro-American women...Jacobs\'s book--reaching across the gulf separating black women from white, slave from free, poor from rich, \"bad\" women from \"good\"--represents an early attempt to establish an American sisterhood.'

Jean Fagan Yellinis Distinguished Professor Emerita, Department of English, <>Pace University.

List of Illustrations

Introduction by Jean Fagan

Cast of Characters

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Preface by the Author

Introduction by the Editor

I. Childhood

II. The New Master and Mistress

III. The Slaves' New Year's Day

IV. The Slave Who Dared to Feel like a Man

V. The Trials of Girlhood

VI. The Jealous Mistress

VII. The Lover

VIII. What Slaves Are Taught to Think of the North

IX. Sketches of Neighboring Slaveholders

X. A Perilous Passage in the Slave Girl's Life

XI. The New Tie to Life

XII. Fear of Insurrection

XIII. The Church and Slavery

XIV. Another Link to Life

XV. Continued Persecutions

XVI. Scenes at the Plantation

XVII. The Flight

XVIII. Months of Peril

XIX. The Children Sold

XX. New Perils

XXI. The Loophole of Retreat

XXII. Christmas Festivities

XXIII. Still in Prison

XXIV. The Candidate for Congress

XXV. Competition in Cunning

XXVI. Important Era in My Brother's Life

XXVII. New Destination for the Children XXVIII Aunt Nancy

XXIX. Preparations for Escape

XXX. Northward Bound

XXXI. Incidents in Philadelphia

XXXII. The Meeting of Mother and Daughter

XXXIII. A Home Found

XXXIV. The Old Enemy Again

XXXV. Prejudice against Color

XXXVI. The Hairbreadth Escape

XXXVII. A Visit to England

XXXVIII. Renewed Invitations to Go South

XXXIX. The Confession

XL. The Fugitive Slave Law

XLI. Free at Last

Appendix

I. Some Account of My Early Die

II. A Further Account of My Family

III. My Uncle's Troubles

IV. My New Master's Plantation

V. My Master Goes to Washington

VI. Sensations of Freedom

VII. Cruel Treatment of Slaves

Illustrations

Abbreviations

Chronology

Correspondence

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index