“A handsome book of 306 pages, just issued, which is receiving highly commendatory notices from the press.”
So announced the abolitionist Liberator about the 1861 publication of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, a book written by Harriet Jacobs about her life in slavery and seeking freedom. Forgotten for many decades, it is one of the only known books written by an enslaved Black woman. Most of the book takes place in the coastal town of Edenton, North Carolina, where Jacobs was born in 1815.
New York State also plays a large, if lesser-known role in the life of Harriet Jacobs, who escaped to the city of New York in 1842 and lived there at two separate times. She also lived in Rochester and in Cornwall, Orange County, where she spent years writing the powerful book that is read and cherished today. [Read more…] about Harriet Jacobs in New York State