Series: The Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers

One of hundreds of slave narratives published just before the Civil War, this account is unique in that it is written by a woman. This offers a different, perhaps more realistic, perspective on slave experience than that presented in the more typical 'heroic' male narrative. The work is notable for its blending and manipulation of several narrative techniques, including those...

Not only one of the last of over one hundred slave narratives published separately before the Civil War, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) is also one of the few existing narratives written by a woman. It offers a unique perspective on the complex plight of the black woman as slave and as writer. In a story...