Our Nig
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Our Nig by Harriet Wilson
With a New Introduction and Notes by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Richard J. EllisA fascinating fusion of two literary models of the nineteenth century, the sentimental novel and the slave narrative, Our Nig, apart from its historical significance, is a deeply ironic and highly readable work, tracing the trials and tribulations of Frado, a mulatto girl abandoned by her white mother after the death of the child's black father, who grows up as an indentured servant to a white family in nineteenth-century Massachusetts. This definitive edition of Our Nig includes a new Introduction by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Richard J. Ellis and a set of appendices: Harriet Wilson's Career as a Spiritualist; Hattie E. Wilson in the Banner of Light and Spiritual Scientist a collection of her extant contributions to these newspapers; Documents from Harriet Wilson's Life in Boston, and a compilation of primary source material relating to Wilson's identity. There is also a new chronology of the life of Harriet Wilson by Richard J. Ellis, as well as an up-to-date Select Bibliography of current scholarship regarding Harriet Wilson. This edition gives the fullest account to date of the life of Harriet Wilson, filling out many critical points regarding her life after writing Our Nig, in particular when she became a medium who communicated with the dead and as an educator in the Spiritualist movement after the Civil War.
Harriet E. Wilson (1825-1900) was an African American novelist. Born a free person of color in New Hampshire, Wilson was the daughter of an African American father and an Irish American mother. Following the death of her father, Wilson was abandoned by her mother at the farm of Nehemiah Hayward Jr., who held her as an indentured servant until the age of eighteen. Upon reaching adulthood, Wilson worked as a house servant and seamstress before, in 1851, marrying an escaped slave named Thomas Wilson, who later abandoned her during pregnancy. Although he returned for a brief time, he died at sea soon after, leaving Wilson a widow. She struggled immensely over the next several years to provide for her son, who would die at the age of seven in 1860. During this period, however, Wilson managed to write Our Nig; or Sketches from the Life of a Free Black (1859), which she published anonymously as a means of raising money for her sick child. Now recognized as the first novel published by an African American in the United States, Wilson's autobiographical work is the only thing she published in her lifetime. After George's death, Wilson moved to Boston, where she remarried; divorced; and worked as a housekeeper, medium, and lecturer.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780394715582 |
| ISBN 10 | 0394715586 |
| Title | Our Nig |
| Author | Harriet Wilson |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Random House USA Inc |
| Year published | 1983-04-12 |
| Number of pages | 240 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |