Uncle Remus His Songs and His Sayings The Folk-Lore of the Old Plantation
Author: Joel Chandler Harris (1845-1908)
Year: 1881
Publisher: D Appleton and Company
Place: New York
Description:
231+[8 ad] pages with frontispiece, 6 other plates and diagrams. Small octavo ((7 3/4" x 5 1/4") bound in original brown cloth with gilt lettering to spine and gilt rabbit pictorial to cover with black back ground drawing. Illustrations by Frederick S Church and James H Moser. First edition, first state with "presumptive" on last line page 9 and "New Books. A Treatise on the Practice of Medicine" (BAL 7100:1).
Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings; The Folk-Lore of the Old Plantation is a landmark 1881 collection of African American folktales compiled and adapted by white American journalist Joel Chandler Harris. Originally published by D. Appleton & Company, the book introduced a global audience to the Br'er Rabbit trickster tales and remains a highly influential yet deeply controversial work of American literature. Though framed as innocent children's stories, the fables carry deep socio-political allegories: Slavery Survival Strategy: Most of the stories originated from West African oral traditions brought to the Americas by enslaved people. On an allegorical level, Br'er Rabbit represents the enslaved African American population who had to use intellect to survive against the dominant white plantation owners (represented by the stronger animals). The book completely revolutionized animal-centric children's literature. It heavily influenced subsequent works like Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit and modern animated characters like Bugs Bunny.
While praised in the 19th century for preserving oral Southern folklore that might otherwise have been lost, the work faces severe contemporary criticism: Critics argue that the character of Uncle Remus promotes a romanticized, sanitized myth of the antebellum South. It presents a nostalgic view of plantation life that masks the brutal realities of slavery. As a white journalist, Harris appropriated these Black ancestral stories and commercially profited from them. The book was the basis for Disney's highly controversial 1946 film Song of the South, which has been locked away by the company for decades due to its racially insensitive depictions.
Joel Chandler Harris was an American journalist, fiction writer, and folklorist best known for his collection of Uncle Remus stories. Harris was born in Eatonton, Georgia, where he served as an apprentice on a plantation during his teenage years. He spent the majority of his adult life in Atlanta working as an associate editor at the Atlanta Constitution. Harris led two professional lives: as the editor and journalist known as Joe Harris, he supported a vision of the New South with the editor Henry W. Grady (1880–1889), stressing regional and racial reconciliation after the Reconstruction era. As Joel Chandler Harris, fiction writer and folklorist, he wrote many 'Brer Rabbit' stories from the African-American oral tradition and helped to revolutionize literature in the process.
Condition:
Corners bumped and slightly rubbed, small closed tear at bottom of title page, some internal soiling and fingering else very good.
