Also American

Person · 1813–1897

Harriet Jacobs

The author of "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" (1861), the most important slave narrative written by a woman.

A foundational author of the [[slave-narratives]] tradition.

To escape an abusive enslaver, Harriet Jacobs hid for nearly seven years in a tiny crawlspace in her grandmother's house before finally reaching the North. Writing under the name Linda Brent, she published Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl in 1861.

Her book broke a silence: it confronted directly the sexual abuse of enslaved women and addressed itself to Northern white women, asking them to see enslaved women as mothers and human beings. It is now recognized as a classic of American literature.

On the timeline

  1. 1861
    Harriet Jacobs publishes "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl"

    One of the only slave narratives written by a woman lays bare the sexual exploitation at the heart of slavery — and seven years Jacobs spent hidden in a crawlspace to escape it.

Resources