Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl（女奴生平）

Incidents i14 the Life of a Slave Girl is the first full—length narra-tire written by a former woman s]ave in America．It tellS the story of Harriet lacobs’S early 1ire as a slave in North Carolina；her fugitive years in Neve York，Boston，and Rochester,where she became an abolition activist；and her struggle for freedom，hard won in 1852．This text is a reprint of the 186l first edition．with explanatory annotations and an introduction bv Nellie Y.cKav and Frances Smith Foster．
“Contexts”includes contemporary responses to Incideuts in the Life of a Slave Girf by William C．Nell and Lvdia Maria Child．among others；twelye related letters and articles by Jacobs published in newspapers during the period from 1853 to 1868：and documents tracing Iacobs’S Iire and achievements as a free woman，including her establishment of a school in Alexandria，Virginia．
“Criftcism”collects eleven important assessments of the work by Jean Fagan Yellin，Ann Taves，Valerie Smith，Nellie Y McKay,Harwette Mullen，Michelle Burnham，NelI Irvin Painter,
Frances Smith Foster,Sandra Gunning，Elizabeth V Spelman，and Christina Accomando．
A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included．

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is the first full-length narrative written by a former woman slave in America. The text is that of the 1861 first edition. Contexts includes contemporary responses to Incidents, selections from Jacobs's other published writings, and extracts from her correspondence. Criticism includes eleven important assessments of the narrative, contributed by Jean Fagan Yellin, Ann Taves, Valerie Smith, Nellie Y. McKay, Harryette Mullen, Michelle Burnham, Nell Irvin Painter, Frances Smith Foster, Sandra Gunning, Elizabeth V. Spelman, and Christine Accomando. A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are included.

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Nellie Y. McKay is Professor of American and Afro-American Literature at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She is the author of Jean Toomer-the Artist: A Study of His Literary Life and Work, 1894-1936, editor of Critical Essays on Toni Morrison, and associate editor of African American Review>. She is general editor of The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. Frances Smith Foster is Professor of English and Women's Studies at Emory University. Her books include Written by Herself: Literary Production by African American Women, 1746-1892, Minnie's Sacrifice, Sowing and Reaping: Trial and Triumph: Three Rediscovered Novels by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and Witnessing Slavery: The Development of the Antebellum Slave Narrative. She is an editor of The Norton Anthology of African American Literature and co-editor of the Oxford Companion to African American Literature.

Introduction
Acknowledgments
The Text of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Contexts
　CONTEMPORARY RFSPONSES
William C. Nell·Linda, the Slave Girl (Liberator, 21 January 1861)
　　Unsigned Announcement·From the Anti-Slavery Bugle(9 February 1861)
William C. Nell·Linda (Liberator, 18 February 1861)
Lydia Maria Child·Letter to John GreenleafWhittier(4 April 1861)
Unsigned Announcement·Linda (Christian Recorder,11 January 1862)
SELEGTIONS FROM JACOBS'S OTHER WRITINGS
Harriet Jacobs·Letter from a Fugitive Slave(New York Tribune, 21 June 1853)
·Letter to Amy Post (25 June 1853)
·Cruelty to Slaves (New York Tribune, 25 July 1853)
·Letter to Amy Post (9 October 18537)
·Letter to Amy Post (18 June 1861)
·Life among the Contrabands (Liberator,5 September 1862)
·Letter from Mrs. Jacobs (Black Abolitionist Papers,13 April 1863)
·Letter from Teachers of the Freedmen (National Anti-Slavery Standard, 16 April 1864)
·Jacobs School (Freedmen's Record, March 1865)
·From Savannah (Freedmen's Record, 18 January 1866)
·Savannah Freedmen's Orphan Asylum (Anti-Slavery Reporter, 3 March 1868)
JACOBS'S WORLD
Nathaniel Willis·From The Convalescent (1859)
Lydia Maria Child·Letters to Harriet Jacobs(13 August 186o; 27 September 186o)
Freedmen's Record·Jacobs (Linda) School, Alexandria,VA (February 1865)
·School at Alexandria (September 1865)
·A Milestone of Progress (December 1865)
Eulogy by Reverend Francis J. Grimke (c. a896)
Criticism
Jean Fagan Yellin·Written by Herself: Harriet Jacobs'Slave Narrative
Ann Taves·Spiritual Purity and Sexual Shame: Religious Themes in the Writings of Harriet Jacobs
Valerie Smith·Form and Ideology in Three Slave Narratives
Nellie Y. McKay·The Girls Who Became the Women:Childhood Memories in the Antobiographies of Harriet Jacobs, Mary Church Terrell, and Anne Moody
Harryette Mul/en·Runaway Tongue: Resistant Orality in Uncle Tom's Cabin, Our Nig, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, and Beloved
Michelle Burnham·Loopholes of Resistance: Harriet Jacobs Slave Narrative and the Critique of Agency in Foucault
Nell Irvin Painter·Three Southern Women and Freud A Non-Exceptionalist Approach to Race, Class, and Gender in the Slave South
Frances Smith Foster·Resisting Incidents
Sandra Cunning·Reading and Redemption in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Elizabeth V. Spelman·The Heady Political Life of Compassion
Christina Accomando·"The laws were laid down to me anew": Harriet lacobs and the Reframing of Legal Fictions
Harriet Jacobs: A Chronology
Selected Bibliography