Harriet Jacobs of Edenton, North Carolina

Jean Fagan Yellin’s article about Harriet Jacobs was published in the North Carolina Dictionary of Biography. Click on the image of Harriet Jacobs to read it online at NCPedia.

Harriet Jacobs was born into slavery in Edenton, North Carolina in 1813. When she was in her forties, Jacobs published her memoir, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself, under the pseudonym Linda Brent. Her flight to freedom began with a seven-year hide-out in an attic in that city. For many years Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl  was believed to be a work of fiction created by a sympathetic white abolitionist. Scholarship proved otherwise.

 

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself
(full audiobook) (public domain) (7:47:00) LibriVox

 

“Professor Sheds Light on Harriet Jacobs’ Path to Freedom”  (14:10) NPR, January 7, 2008

 

Harriet Jacobs: A Life (1:21:37) C-SPAN, May 18, 2005
“Jean Fagan Yellin talked about her biography Harriet Jacobs: A Life, published by Basic Books. It profiled the life of slave woman Harriet Jacobs. The author explains that Harriet Jacobs became the first-ever published slave woman with the publication of her book, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, nearly 150 years ago. Ms. Yellin detailed the former slave girl’s adolescent years of sexual abuse, seven years of hiding in an attic, and her eventual escape to the North. After the discussion, she responded to audience questions.”

 

“Harriet Jacobs and Dr. Jean Fagan Yellin” (8:33) YouTube, February 27, 2013
“Dr. Yellin, author of a biography of Harriet Jacobs, discusses in this exclusive interview how she found the real historic person behind the author of the only slave narrative told from a feminine point of view.”