Harriet Jacobs

This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition combines the two most important African American slave narratives into one volume. Frederick Douglass's Narrative, first published in 1845, is an enlightening and incendiary text. Born into slavery, Douglass became the preeminent spokesman for his people during his life; his narrative is an unparalleled account of the dehumanizing effects of slavery and Douglass's own triumph over it. Like Douglass, Harriet Jacobs was born into slavery, and in 1861 she published Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, now recognized as the most comprehensive antebellum slave narrative written by a woman. Jacobs's account broke the silence on the exploitation of African American female slaves, and it remains crucial reading. These narratives illuminate and inform each other. This edition includes an incisive Introduction by Kwame Anthony Appiah and extensive annotations.

One of hundreds of slave narratives published just before the Civil War, this account is unique in that it is written by a woman. This offers a different, perhaps more realistic, perspective on slave experience than that presented in the more typical `heroic' male narrative. The work is notable for its blending and manipulation of several narrative techniques, including those of the sentimental novel, of autobiography, and of the classical slave narrative.

Published in 1861, this book is one of the last of many slave narratives published before the Civil War; it is also one of the few existing narratives written by a woman. As such it offers a unique perspective on the complex plight of the black woman as slave and as writer. Merging the conventions of the slave narrative with the techniques of the sentimental novel, Harriet Jacobs describes her efforts to fight off the advances of her master, her eventual liaison with another white man, the father of her two children, and her ultimately successful struggle for freedom.

A firsthand account of a mulatto woman's desperate flight from the sexual abuse of her Southern master