Harriet Jacobs and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: New Critical Essays

Harriet Jacobs, today perhaps the single most read and studied black American woman of the nineteenth century, has notuntil now - been the subject of sustained, scholarly analysis. This anthology presents a far-ranging compendium of literary and cultural scholarship that is sure to become the primary resource for students and teachers of Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. The contributors include both established Jacobs scholars and emerging critics; the essays take on a variety of subjects from Incidents, treating representation, gender, resistance, and spirituality from differing angles. The chapters seek to contextualize both the historical figure of Harriet Jacobs and her autobiography as a created work of art; all endeavor to be accessible to a heterogeneous readership.