Other editions of book Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl : restored version complete and unabridged

This eBook edition of "Harriet Jacobs: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" has been formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices."Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" is an autobiography by a young mother and fugitive slave Harriet Ann Jacobs. Jacobs contributed to the genre of slave narrative by using the techniques of sentimental novels "to address race and gender issues." She explores the struggles and sexual abuse that female slaves faced on plantations as well as their efforts to practice motherhood and protect their children when their children might be sold away. Harriet Ann Jacobs (1813 – 1897) was an African-American writer who escaped from slavery and was later freed. She became an abolitionist speaker and reformer.

Harriet A. Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself is the most important narrative written by a former female slave in antebellum America. Published in 1861 and under the penname of Linda Brent, the book is a powerful indictment on black women’s exploitation in America. “Slavery is terrible for men, but it is far more terrible for women”, declares Jacobs before describing the degradation of slavery and the sexual oppression she experienced as a black woman.

Packaged in handsome, affordable trade editions, Clydesdale Classics is a new series of essential literary works. It features literary phenomena with influence and themes so great that, after their publication, they changed literature forever. From the musings of literary geniuses like Mark Twain in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to the striking personal narrative of Solomon Northup in Twelve Years a Slave, this new series is a comprehensive collection of our history through the words of the exceptional few.One of the only surviving female slave narratives from the twentieth century, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is an autobiographical account written by Harriet Jacobs. The narrative documents the extreme adversity she overcame before she eventually achieved her freedom. Born into slavery, young Harriet was taken into the care of her mother’s mistress, who treated her relatively well. However, a few years later, the mistress passed away and her cruel, abusive relatives inherited Harriet.Under the pseudonym “Linda Brent,” Jacobs recounts within the book the horrific injustices she encountered: sexual abuse, extreme cruelty, exploitation, being denied motherhood when her children are sold to another slave owner. In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet’s agonizing descriptions are indicative of what many other enslaved African American women suffered through during this tragic time in American history.Published in 1861, just on the brink of the Civil War, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is a harrowing literary work bringing to light the courage, empowerment, and perseverance a young slave found in her desperate search for freedom.

Harriet Jacobs was not an ordinary slave girl, and her autobiography is not an ordinary account of the miseries of slavery. She was a slave who triumphed not only by luck but by careful planning and daring deceit. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, the most important and most widely read female slave narrative, presents the subtle humiliations in addition to the simple brutality of slave life, especially for enslaved women and children. This gripping account, first published under the pseudonym Linda Brent, skilfully employs rhetorical and narrative devices to create a gripping and evocative story. Indeed, until Jean Yellin’s over work a century later, it was regarded as a work of fiction.

Harriet Ann Jacobs was an American writer, escaped slave, abolitionist speaker and reformer. Jacobs' single work, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, published in 1861 under the pseudonym "Linda Brent", was one of the first autobiographical narratives about the struggle for freedom by female slaves and an account of the sexual abuse they endured. While on one level it chronicles the experiences of Harriet Jacobs as a slave, and the various humiliations she had to endure in that unhappy state, it also deals with the particular tortures visited on women at her station. Often in the book, she will point to a particular punishment that a male slave will endure at the hands of slave holders, and comment that, although she finds the punishment brutal in the extreme, it cannot compare to the abuse that a young woman must face while still on the cusp of girlhood.

"Published in 1861, this true story is one of the first personal narratives by a slave and one of the few written by a woman. Jacobs (1813-97) was a slave in North Carolina and suffered terribly, along with her family, at the hands of a ruthless owner.As a child, Harriet Jacobs remained blissfully unaware that she was a slave until the deaths of both her mother and a benevolent mistress exposed her to a sexually predatory master, Dr. Flint who exploited and assaulted her over and over again. Determined to escape, she spends seven years hidden away in a garret in her grandmother’s house, three feet high at its tallest point, with almost no air or light, and with only glimpses of her children to sustain her courage. In the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, she finally wins her battle for freedom by escaping to the North in 1842."

Here is one of the few slave narratives written by a women. Slavery is a terrible thing, but it is far more terrible and harrowing for women than for men. Harriet Jacobs was owned by a brutal master who beat his slaves regularly and subjected them to indignations that were far worse. Jacobs eventually escaped her master and moved to a northern state. Though she was unable to take her children with her at the time they were later reunited. Read her powerful and compelling story.

- Included with Slave History in America.Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is a slave narrative that was published in 1861 by Harriet Ann Jacobs, using the pen name "Linda Brent." The book is an in-depth chronological account of Jacobs's life as a slave, and the decisions and choices she made to gain freedom for herself and her children. It addresses the struggles and sexual abuse that young women slaves faced on the plantations, and how these struggles were harsher than what men suffered as slaves. The book is considered sentimental and written to provoke an emotional response and sympathy from the reader toward slavery in general and slave women in particular[citation needed] for their struggles with rape, the pressure to have sex at an early age, the selling of their children, and the treatment of female slaves by their mistresses.Jacobs began composing Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl while living and working at Idlewild, the Hudson River home of writer and publisher Nathaniel Parker Willis, who was fictionalized in the book as Mr. Bruce. Portions of the book were published in serial form in the New-York Tribune, owned and edited by Horace Greeley. Jacobs's reports of sexual abuse were considered too shocking to the average newspaper reader of the day, and publication ceased before the completion of the narrative.Boston publishing house Phillips and Samson agreed to print the work in book form if Jacobs could convince Willis or Harriet Beecher Stowe to provide a preface. She refused to ask Willis for help and Stowe turned her down, though the Phillips and Samson company closed anyway. She eventually managed to sign an agreement with the Thayer & Eldridge publishing house and they requested a preface by Lydia Maria Child. Child also edited the book and the company introduced her to Jacobs. The two women remained in contact for much of their remaining lives. Thayer & Eldridge, however, declared bankruptcy before the narrative could be published.

*Illustrated*Includes Table of Contents This classic memoir of slave life, written by a highly-literate North Carolina slave, was first published at the beginning of the Civil War when Jacobs had escaped to the North and begun campaigning for abolition. Her narrative focused especially clearly on the ways that slavery degraded women through sexual abuse and the separation of mothers from their children.

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is an autobiography by a young mother and fugitive slave published in 1861 by L. Maria Child, who edited the book for its author, Harriet Ann Jacobs. Jacobs used the pseudonym Linda Brent. The book documents Jacobs' life as a slave and how she gained freedom for herself and for her children. Jacobs contributed to the genre of slave narrative by using the techniques of sentimental novels "to address race and gender issues." She explores the struggles and sexual abuse that female slaves faced on plantations as well as their efforts to practice motherhood and protect their children when their children might be sold away.