SOURCE: "Introduction" to Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself by Harriet A. Jacobs, edited by L. Maria Child (1861), new edition edited and introduced by Jean Fagan Yellin, Harvard University Press, 1987, pp. 3-4.

In the introduction that accompanied Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl upon its publication in 1861, Child attests to the veracity and purpose of the text

The author of the following autobiography is personally known to me, and her conversation manners and inspire me with confidence.¹ During the last seventeen years, she has lived the greater part of the time with a distinguished family in New York, and has so deported herself as to be highly esteemed by them. This fact is sufficient, without further credentials of her character. I believe those who know her will not be disposed to doubt her veracity, though some incidents in her story are...