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  • “This Narrative Is No Fiction”: Harriet Jacobs in the Archives
  • Karen Woods Weierman (bio)
Jean Fagan Yellin, ed. The Harriet Jacobs Family Papers. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008. Two-volume boxed set. 1,056 pp. Illustrations, maps, tables, family tree, appendix, notes, index, and CD-ROM. $125.00.

Fugitive slave Harriet Jacobs spent seven years in an attic crawlspace before she escaped to the North and eventually wrote her autobiography. Her story is a familiar one, thanks to the intrepid scholarship of Jean Fagan Yellin. Following the clues in the archival record, Yellin proved that Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl was not fictional, as mistakenly believed by twentieth-century scholars, but was an autobiography. Yellin’s twenty-two–year archival detective hunt led to a monumental three-part project: a scholarly edition of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1987), the acclaimed biography Harriet Jacobs: A Life (2004), and the eagerly awaited Harriet Jacobs Family Papers (2008).

Yellin’s foundational, transformative scholarship has led to numerous journal articles and book chapters on Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, with subjects ranging from genre to motherhood to authorship and voice.1 Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is now firmly established in the canon of American literature, appearing in multiple paperback editions, literature anthologies, and course syllabi; along with Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, it is generally recognized as the most important of the American slave narratives. With the publication of The Harriet Jacobs Family Papers, Yellin continues to expand our knowledge of Harriet Jacobs’ life and times.

In addition to her highly regarded autobiography, Harriet Jacobs is the only known African American woman to have left papers regarding her life in slavery. This stunning collection consists of “writings by Jacobs, her brother John S. Jacobs, and her daughter Louisa Matilda Jacobs, writings to them, and private and public writings about them” (p. xxix). The papers contain approximately 900 items, about 300 of which appear in the print collection. The documents have been divided chronologically and thematically into twelve parts printed in two volumes.

The Harriet Jacobs Family Papers is designed to provide tools for future scholarship. The documents present the point of view of an African American [End Page 61] woman in slavery and freedom and offer amazing insight into the creation and reception of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl [hereinafter ILSG]. But the collection’s significance goes beyond Jacobs’ life and autobiography. As Yellin notes, “this collection offers an extraordinary new source for the study of nineteenth-century reform movements, as well as for the study of the Civil War and Reconstruction” (p. xxx). Building on other documentary projects such as the Black Abolitionist Papers (1985–92), the project “excavate[s] the larger social matrix within which Jacobs and others acted in their reform struggles” (p. xxxiii). The collection succeeds admirably in all these areas. The rich archival material is complemented by outstanding documentary editing: the elegant organization, detailed essays, headnotes, and endnotes provide us with essential context. While the collection is probably most useful and engaging to readers already familiar with ILSG, readers new to Jacobs will be able to immerse themselves in the material with the assistance of biographical sketches and a fifteen-page chronology.

Part one (September 1810–November 1843: “Slavery and Resistance”) opens the collection with a series of legal documents tracing the history of Jacobs’ family in slavery. The various wills and petitions reveal how every master’s death meant separation and betrayal for the Jacobs family. The section ends on a somewhat happier note—as Harriet Jacobs’ emancipated grandmother asserts her rights as a free woman on behalf of her family. Part two (September 1845–April 1849: “British Respite, Northern Activism”) features John S. Jacobs’ Garrisonian antislavery activism in Boston and Rochester and his leadership in the black community. The section also includes reports from his lecture tour with Jonathan Walker, the Massachusetts abolitionist and sea captain branded with the initials “SS” (“slave stealer”) for his attempt to help slaves escape from Florida to the Bahamas.

We first hear Harriet Jacobs’ voice in part three (April...

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