American literary history is rife with stories of writers who achieved prominence only long after their time. No less illustrious figures than Herman Melville, Henry James, Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, and Margaret Fuller experienced that fate. These writers, overlooked by their generations, gained laudable recognition from writers and critics who came after them. Not surprisingly then, the reputations of a large number of earlier African American writers, who in their time, like all others in their group, were marginalized in American society as a whole, followed a similar path....

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is the first full—length narra-tire written by a former woman s]ave in America．It tellS the story of Harriet lacobs’S early 1ire as a slave in North Carolina；her fugitive years in Neve York，Boston，and Rochester,where she became an abolition activist；and her struggle for freedom，hard won in 1852．This text is a reprint of the 186l first edition．with explanatory annotations and an introduction bv Nellie Y.cKav and Frances Smith Foster．

“Contexts”includes contemporary responses to Incideuts in the Life of a Slave Girf by William C．Nell and Lvdia Maria Child．among others；twelye related letters and articles by Jacobs published in newspapers during the period from 1853 to 1868：and documents tracing Iacobs’S Iire and achievements as a free woman，including her establishment of a school in Alexandria，Virginia．

“Criftcism”collects eleven important assessments of the work by Jean Fagan Yellin，Ann Taves，Valerie Smith，Nellie Y McKay,Harwette Mullen，Michelle Burnham，NelI Irvin Painter,Frances Smith Foster,Sandra Gunning，Elizabeth V Spelman，and Christina Accomando．

A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included．

Introduction

Acknowledgments

The Text of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Contexts

　CONTEMPORARY RFSPONSES

　　William C. Nell·Linda, the Slave Girl (Liberator, 21 January 1861)

　　Unsigned Announcement·From the Anti-Slavery Bugle(9 February 1861)

　　William C. Nell·Linda (Liberator, 18 February 1861)

　　Lydia Maria Child·Letter to John GreenleafWhittier(4 April 1861)

　　Unsigned Announcement·Linda (Christian Recorder,11 January 1862)

　SELEGTIONS FROM JACOBS'S OTHER WRITINGS

　　Harriet Jacobs·Letter from a Fugitive Slave(New York Tribune, 21 June 1853)

　　　·Letter to Amy Post (25 June 1853)

　　　·Cruelty to Slaves (New York Tribune, 25 July 1853)

　　　·Letter to Amy Post (9 October 18537)

　　　·Letter to Amy Post (18 June 1861)

　　　·Life among the Contrabands (Liberator,5 September 1862)

　　　·Letter from Mrs. Jacobs (Black Abolitionist Papers,13 April 1863)

　　　·Letter from Teachers of the Freedmen (National Anti-Slavery Standard, 16 April 1864)

　　　·Jacobs School (Freedmen's Record, March 1865)

　　　·From Savannah (Freedmen's Record, 18 January 1866)

　　　·Savannah Freedmen's Orphan Asylum (Anti-Slavery Reporter, 3 March 1868)

 JACOBS'S WORLD

　　Nathaniel Willis·From The Convalescent (1859)

　　Lydia Maria Child·Letters to Harriet Jacobs(13 August 186o; 27 September 186o)

　　Freedmen's Record·Jacobs (Linda) School, Alexandria,VA (February 1865)

　　 ·School at Alexandria (September 1865)

　　 ·A Milestone of Progress (December 1865)

　　Eulogy by Reverend Francis J. Grimke (c. a896)

Criticism

 Jean Fagan Yellin·Written by Herself: Harriet Jacobs'Slave Narrative

 Ann Taves·Spiritual Purity and Sexual Shame: Religious Themes in the Writings of Harriet Jacobs

 Valerie Smith·Form and Ideology in Three Slave Narratives

 Nellie Y. McKay·The Girls Who Became the Women:Childhood Memories in the Antobiographies of Harriet Jacobs, Mary Church Terrell, and Anne Moody

 Harryette Mul/en·Runaway Tongue: Resistant Orality in Uncle Tom's Cabin, Our Nig, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, and Beloved

 Michelle Burnham·Loopholes of Resistance: Harriet Jacobs Slave Narrative and the Critique of Agency in Foucault

 Nell Irvin Painter·Three Southern Women and Freud A Non-Exceptionalist Approach to Race, Class, and Gender in the Slave South

 Frances Smith Foster·Resisting Incidents

 Sandra Cunning·Reading and Redemption in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

 Elizabeth V. Spelman·The Heady Political Life of Compassion

 Christina Accomando·"The laws were laid down to me anew": Harriet lacobs and the Reframing of Legal Fictions

Harriet Jacobs: A Chronology

Selected Bibliography