Achievement

Harriet Wilson' s contribution to American literature is not only to have written the first novel by an African-American woman, but also as one of the first major innovators of the American fictional narrative form.. Our Nig combines the traditions of a Black and male narrator of a slave narrative and that of a White and female of a sentimental novel.

Primary Work

Our Nig; Or, Sketches From The Life Of A Free Black, 1859.

| Top | Selected Bibliography

Bennetts, Leslie. "An 1859 Black Literary Landmark is Uncovered." New York Times (Nov 8, 1982).

Berlin, Ira. "America's First Black Novel," Washington Post Book World, July 3, 1983.

Breau, Elizabeth. "Identifying Satire: Our Nig." Callaloo 16.2 (Sprg 1993): 455-.

Cole, Phyllis. "Stowe, Jacobs, Wilson: White Plots and Black Counterplots." New Perspectives on Gender, Race, and Class in Society. Ed. Audrey T. McCluskey. Bloomington: Indiana Univ, 1990. 23-45.

Davis, Cynthia J. "Speaking the Body's Pain: Harriet Wilson's Our Nig." African American Review 27.3 (Fall 1993): 391-404.

Doriani, Beth M. "Black Womanhood in Nineteenth Century America: Subversion and Self Construcion in Two Women's Autobiographies." American Quarterly 43.2 (Jun 1991): 199-222.

Ernest, John. "Economies of Identity: Harriet E. Wilson's Our Nig." PMLA 109.3 (May 1994): 424-38.

Foreman, P. Gabrielle. "The Spoken and the Silenced in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Our Nig." Callaloo 13.2 (Sprg 1990): 313-24.

Gardner, Eric. "`This Attempt of Their Sister': Harriet Wilson's Our Nig From Printer to Readers." New England Quarterly 66.2 (Jun 1993): 226-46.

Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. "Harriet E. Adams Wilson." Afro American Writers Before the Harlem Renaissance. Detroit, Michigan: Gale Research Co., 1986.

Herndl, Diane P. "The Invisible (Invalid) Woman: African American Women, Illness, and Nineteen Century Narrative." Women's Studies 24.6 (Sep 1995): 553-72.

Holloway, Karla F. C. "Economies of Space: Markets and marketability in Our Nig and Iolo Leroy." The (Other) American Traditions. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers UP, 1993.

| Top | Jones, Jill C. "The Disappearing 'I' in Our Nig." Legacy 13.1 (1996): 38-53.

- - -. "'You Don't Know about Me': The Disenfranchised Narrator in Nineteenth Century United States Fiction." DIA 56.10 (Apr 1996): 3959A DAI No.: DA9605706.

Lovell, Thomas B. "By Dint of Labor and Economy: Harriet Jacobs, Harriet Wilson, and the Salutary View of Wage Labor." Arizona Quarterly 52.3 (Autm 1996): 1-32.

Mitchell, Angelyn. "Her Side of His Story: A Feminist Analysis of Two Nineteenth-Century Antebellum Novels - William Wells Brown's Clotel and Harriet E. Wilson's Our Nig." American Literary Realism 24.3 (Sprg 1992): 7-21.

Mullen, Harryette. "Runaway Tongue: Resistant Orality in Uncle Tom's Cabin, Our Nig, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, and Beloved." The Culture of Sentiment: Race, Gender, and Sentimentality in Nineteenth Century America. Ed. Shirley Samuels. NY: Oxford UP, 1992. 244-64.

O'Connell, Catherine E. Chastening the Rod: Sentimental Strategies in Three Antebellum Novels by Women." DIA 52.10 (Apr 1992): 3603A DAI No.: DA9208617.

Stern, Julia. "Excavating Genre in Our Nig." American Literature 67.3 (Sep 19950; 439-66.

Slung, Michele. "Review of Our Nig." Washington Post Book World, May 8, 1983.

Tate, Claudia. "Allegories of Black Female Desire: Or, Rereading Nineteenth Century Sentimental Narratives of Black Female Authority." Changing Our Own Words: Essays on Criticism, Theory, and Writing by Black Women. Ed. Cheryl A. Wall. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1989. 98-126.

White, Barbara A. "Our Nig and the She-Devil: New Information about Harriet Wilson and the `Bellmont' Family." American Literature 65.1 (Mar 1993): 19-52.

MLA Style Citation of this Web Page:

Reuben, Paul P. "Chapter 3: Early Nineteenth Century - Harriet E. Adams Wilson." PAL: Perspectives in American Literature- A Research and Reference Guide. WWW URL: http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap3/wilson.html (provide page date or your date of logon).  

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