Harriet Jacobs

Harriet Jacobs's memoir Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (published under the pseudonym Linda Brent) was published in 1861, the same year as the outbreak of the Civil War. Yet the story told by Jacobs, a former North Carolina slave, is among the most remarkable of the genre for its candid description of the sexual abuse all too commonly inflicted upon slave women by white owners. Jacobs's escape from her tormenter Dr. James Norcom was also distinctive, as she took refuge in her grandmother's shed, where she hid for seven years before at last fleeing to New York City. Once in the North, Jacobs became involved in the antislavery movement. She was befriended by the Quaker abolitionist Lydia Maria Child, who encouraged Jacobs to compose her memoir and helped with its editing. Although Jacobs was literate, for many years readers...