Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

The memoir Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) is an account of the life of Harriet Ann Jacobs, who calls herself “Linda Brent” in the narrative. It is a key text in the slave narrative genre, which were first-person narratives written by formerly enslaved people that hoped to convert readers to the abolitionist cause. While most slave narratives were written by men, such as The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1791), Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845), and Solomon Northrup’s Twelve Years a Slave (1853), Jacobs’ narrative was one of the first that explored the unique condition of enslaved Black women, including sexual abuse by white enslavers.