Published in 1861, Harriet Jacobs’s ‘Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl’ was one of the first of the personal slave narratives. At the time this book was first published Harriet Jacobs was living as an escaped slave in the North, a precarious position given the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Originally published under the pseudonym Linda Brent, ‘Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl’ is a gripping first hand account of the brutality endured by slaves and one of the few ever written by a woman.