1861: Jacobs

Only known photograph of Harriet Jacobs (1894)

Harriet Jacobs was almost 30 thirty years old when she escaped from slavery in Edenton, North Carolina in 1842.

Sixteen years later, in 1858, Jacobs was working as a nanny and domestic servant in New York City, when she finishes work on a narrative of her experience.

Jacob's book is the first slave narrative authored by a Black woman in America.

Jacobs could not find a publisher for her work "until Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880), the well-known woman of letters and abolitionist, agreed to write a preface for it. Child . . . [put] much editorial work into the manuscript; and when the contracted publishers went bankrupt, she arranged for its publication" (The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Shorter 9th Edition: Beginnings to 1865, 879).

The original title of the narrative was Linda: Or, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by her Self, and it was published in 1861 under the pseudonym: "Linda Brent." 

Although the text received favorable reviews, the "outbreak of the Civil War made its message less pressing. . . and it sank from notice ..." (The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Shorter 9th Edition: Beginnings to 1865, 879).

Jacobs had been living in Washington, D.C. for twenty years when she died in 1897.

Legacy

In time, scholars came to believe that it was a novel. Some believed it was actually authored by Lydia Maria Child, the well-known white writer who helped Jacobs edit and publish it. In the 1980s, research done by historian Jean Fagin Yellin established "that this was an autobiographical narrative and not a novel" and as a result, the book enjoyed "belated acclaim" (The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Shorter 9th Edition: Beginnings to 1865, 879).