BiblioVault - Books about 1813-1897

Harriet Jacobs

A Play

Lydia R. Diamond

Northwestern University Press, 2010

Throughout her meteoric rise into the upper ranks of young playwrights, Lydia R. Diamond has boldly challenged assumptions about African American culture. In Harriet Jacobs, she turns one of the greatest of American slave narratives, Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, into a penetrating, rousing work of theater.

Jacobs’ book—which was published in 1861 and only partially serialized in Horace Greely’s New York Tribune before it was deemed too graphic—chillingly exposed the sexual harassment and abuse of slave girls and women at the hands of their masters. Harriet Jabobs: A Play organically incorporates theatrical elements that extend the book’s enormous power. Through active scenes, piercing direct address, and slave narratives, Diamond is able to give new expression to the horrors and legacies of slavery. Diamond presents African American culture in all its richness—with slavery as a part of it, but not its defining aspect. Though harrowing, Harriet Jacobs addresses the necessary task of reenvisioning a difficult chapter in American history.

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Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Written by Herself, First Edition

Harriet A. Jacobs; edited by Jean Fagan Yellin

Harvard University Press, 1987

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Written by Herself, Now with "A True Tale of Slavery" by John S. Jacobs, Enlarged Edition

Harriet A. Jacobs and John S. Jacobs; edited by Jean Fagan Yellin

Harvard University Press, 2000

THIS EDITION HAS BEEN REPLACED BY A NEWER EDITION.

This enlarged edition of the most significant and celebrated slave narrative now completes the Jacobs family saga, surely one of the most memorable in all of American history. John Jacobs's short slave narrative, A True Tale of Slavery, published in London in 1861, adds a brother's perspective to Harriet Jacobs's own autobiography. It is an exciting addition to this now classic work, as John Jacobs presents additional historical information about family life so well described already by his sister. Importantly, it presents the people, places, and events Harriet Jacobs wrote about from the different perspective of a male narrator. Once more, Jean Yellin, who discovered this long-lost document, supplies annotation and authentication. She has also brought her Introduction up to date.

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Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Written by Herself, with “A True Tale of Slavery” by John S. Jacobs

Harriet A. Jacobs and John S. Jacobs; edited by Jean Fagan Yellin

Harvard University Press, 2009

This enlarged edition of the most significant and celebrated slave narrative completes the Jacobs family saga, surely one of the most memorable in all of American history. John S. Jacobs’s short slave narrative, A True Tale of Slavery, published in London in 1861, adds a brother’s perspective to Harriet A. Jacobs’s autobiography. It is an exciting addition to this now classic work, as John Jacobs presents further historical information about family life so well described already by his sister. Once more, Jean Fagan Yellin, who discovered this long-lost document, supplies annotation and authentication.

This is the standard edition of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, reissued here in the John Harvard Library and updated with a new bibliography.

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