Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism

Harriet Ann Jacobs

W.W. Norton, Incorporated, 2019 - Biography & Autobiography - 385 pages

This Norton Critical Edition includes:

• The first edition (1861), with the editors' explanatory annotations, introduction, and glossary of the people of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.
• Three illustrations.
• Key public statements by Harriet Jacobs, William C. Nell, the Reverend Francis J. Grimke, and others.
• A rich selection of correspondence by Harriet Jacobs, Lydia Maria Child, and John Greenleaf Whittier, suggesting Incidents's initial reception.
• Ten major critical essays, six of them new to the Second Edition.
• A Chronology and a Selected Bibliography.

About the Series

Read by more than 12 million students over fifty-five years, Norton Critical Editions set the standard for apparatus that is right for undergraduate readers. The three-part format--annotated text, contexts, and criticism--helps students to better understand, analyze, and appreciate the literature, while opening a wide range of teaching possibilities for instructors. Whether in print or in digital format, Norton Critical Editions provide all the resources students need.

About the author

Harriet Jacobs was born in Edenton, North Carolina, in 1813, to slave parents. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, the first full-length narrative written by a former slave woman in America, is a record of events and experiences of slavery seen through the eyes of the young Harriet during the years she lived in captivity in Edenton, through her escape, when she becomes a fugitive in the North at age twenty-nine, and concluding soon after a northern white friend buys her freedom in 1852.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Authoritative Text, Contexts, Criticism; Volume 0 of Norton critical edition
• Author: Harriet Ann Jacobs
• Editors: Frances Smith Foster, Richard Yarborough
• Edition: 2
• Publisher: W.W. Norton, Incorporated, 2019
• ISBN: 0393614565, 9780393614565
• Length: 385 pages
• Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / Historical; History / Americas (North, Central, South, West Indies)