Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

An Autobiographical Account of an Escaped Slave and Abolitionist

Harriet Ann Jacobs

• Publisher: Skyhorse
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781945186028
• eBook ISBN:
  9781632209313
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Biografie in ambito storico

After hiding in her grandmother’s attic for seven years, Harriet Ann Jacobs was finally able to escape servitude—and her master’s sexual abuse—when she fled to the North. Once there, she became a very active abolitionist, and her correspondence with Harriet Beecher Stowe inspired her to write Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl about her years as a slave.

She published the narrative in 1861 under the pseudonym Linda Brent, and the book was written as a novel with fictionalized characters to protect Jacobs from retribution by her former owners. (Dr. Flint, i.e., the real Dr. James Norcom, is Linda Brent’s master in the novel.) The story emphasized certain negative aspects of slavery—especially the struggles of female slaves under sexually abusive masters, cruel mistresses, and the sale of their children—in order to play on the sympathies of white middle-class women in the North.

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl was published at the beginning of the American Civil War. It contributed to the Union’s and abolitionists’ war effort, but is today seen as an important first-hand account from an escaped slave woman and an important abolitionist. After the Civil War, Jacobs continued to support the African-American cause, particularly education, until her death in 1897.

Skyhorse Publishing, along with our Arcade, Good Books, Sports Publishing, and Yucca imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs. Our list includes biographies on well-known historical figures like Benjamin Franklin, Nelson Mandela, and Alexander Graham Bell, as well as villains from history, such as Heinrich Himmler, John Wayne Gacy, and O. J. Simpson. We have also published survivor stories of World War II, memoirs about overcoming adversity, first-hand tales of adventure, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Preface by the Author
• Introduction by the Editor
• Contents
• Chapter I. Childhood
• Chapter II. The New Master and Mistress
• Chapter III. The Slaves’ New Year’s Day
• Chapter IV. The Slave Who Dared to Feel Like a Man
• Chapter V. The Trials of Girlhood
• Chapter VI. The Jealous Mistress
• Chapter VII. The Lover
• Chapter VIII. What Slaves Are Taught to Think of the North
• Chapter IX. Sketches of Neighboring Slaveholders
• Chapter X. A Perilous Passage in the Slave Girl’s Life
• Chapter XI. The New Tie to Life
• Chapter XII. Fear of Insurrection
• Chapter XIII. The Church and Slavery
• Chapter XIV. Another Link to Life
• Chapter XV. Continued Persecutions
• Chapter XVI. Scenes at the Plantation
• Chapter XVII. The Flight
• Chapter XVIII. Months of Peril
• Chapter XIX. The Children Sold
• Chapter XX. New Perils
• Chapter XXI. The Loophole of Retreat
• Chapter XXII. Christmas Festivities
• Chapter XXIII. Still in Prison
• Chapter XXIV. The Candidate for Congress
• Chapter XXV. Competition in Cunning
• Chapter XXVI. Important Era in My Brother’s Life
• Chapter XXVII. New Destination for the Children
• Chapter XXVIII. Aunt Nancy
• Chapter XXIX. Preparations for Escape
• Chapter XXX. Northward Bound
• Chapter XXXI. Incidents in Philadelphia
• Chapter XXXII. The Meeting of Mother and Daughter
• Chapter XXXIII. A Home Found
• Chapter XXXIV. The Old Enemy Again
• Chapter XXXV. Prejudice Against Color
• Chapter XXXVI. The Hairbreadth Escape
• Chapter XXXVII. A Visit to England
• Chapter XXXVIII. Renewed Invitations to Go South
• Chapter XXXIX. The Confession
• Chapter XL. The Fugitive Slave Law
• Chapter XLI. Free at Last
• Appendix