Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself

by Harriet A. Jacobs

Harriet Jacobs was born into slavery in Edenton, North Carolina, in 1813 and published this account in 1861 under the name Linda Brent, changing names to protect those who had helped her. She describes a childhood in which she did not know she was a slave, the death of a kind mistress, and years of persecution by a master who wanted her as his concubine. To escape him she took a white lover and bore two children, then hid for nearly seven years in a crawl space in her grandmother's attic before fleeing north. The book is unusual among slave narratives for its woman's perspective and for what it says plainly about sexual exploitation. For a century its authorship was doubted; research in the 1980s settled it. Read it online in your browser on Vinteuil; the first chapter is free.