Elijah Jacobs
, a carpenter and a slave, has been identified as HJ
's father. He was married to Harriet's mother, and after she died he was married again and had another family of children...
Literary responses
Harriet Jacobs
HJ
's editor and biographer Jean Fagan Yellin
calls her one of a very small group of Afro-American women capable of creating a book that affords a new perspective on the American romance.
Jacobs, Harriet. “Introduction”. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, edited by Jean Fagan Yellin, Harvard University Press, 1987, p. vii - xxxv.
xxxiii
She...
Literary responses
Harriet Jacobs
HJ
's work fed into an emergent tradition of black American writing. Frances E. W. Harper
's ground-breaking novel Iola Leroy; or, Shadows Uplifted was probably influenced by her (its central black characters, from North...
Literary responses
Rebecca Harding Davis
More recently, however, critics have expressed regret about RHD
's decision to submit to editorial control by James T. Fields
. Following Jean Fagan Yellin
, Janice Milner Lasseter
contended that the revised version of...
Publishing
Rebecca Harding Davis
RHD
had originally submitted the story to the Atlantic Monthly in May 1861, on encouragement from the editor, James T. Fields
, and his wife, Annie
. Fields, however, rejected the first version of the...
Textual Production
Harriet Jacobs
It originally appeared under the pseudonym Linda Brent (which is given not on the title-page but as signature to the Preface by the Author). The fact that it was edited by Lydia Maria Child
Textual Production
Harriet Jacobs
In the late twentieth century Jean Fagan Yellin
, future editor and biographer of HJ
, discovered a previously unknown collection of original letters written by Jacobs to Amy Post
between May 1849 and June...
Timeline
No timeline events available.
Texts
Yellin, Jean Fagan. Harriet Jacobs. Basic Civitas Books, 2004.
Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Editor Yellin, Jean Fagan, Harvard University Press, 1987.
Jacobs, Harriet. “Introduction”. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, edited by Jean Fagan Yellin, Harvard University Press, 1987, p. vii - xxxv.
Yellin, Jean Fagan. “The ‘Feminization’ of Rebecca Harding Davis”. American Literary History, Vol.