Not only one of the last of over one hundred slave narratives published separately before the Civil War, ^IIncidents in the Life of a Slave Girl^R (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 that merges the conventions of the slave narrative with the techniques of the sentimental novel, Harriet Jacobs describes her efforts to fight off the advances of her master,

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