Joel Chandler Harris

American writer Joel Chandler Harris (1848-1908) used folklore, fiction, dialect, and other devices of local color to picture both black and white Georgians under slavery and Reconstruction.

Joel Chandler Harris was born in Eatonton, Ga., the illegitimate son of Mary Harris. Scantily educated, at 13 Harris became an apprentice printer on a little newspaper edited and published by Joseph Addison Turner, a highly literate planter, lawyer, and writer, and learned about writing under Turner's tutelage. Harris then worked on newspapers in several Southern cities. While in Savannah he met and married Esther LaRose; they had nine children. In 1876 Harris began a 24-year association with the Atlanta Constitution.

Harris's work as a columnist led to his creation of Uncle Remus, the black singer of songs and teller of stories. The tales, collected in Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings (1880), are based upon folklore and are told by the venerable family servant to a little boy on a Georgia plantation. The book's favorable reviews and large sales led to magazine publication of stories later collected in Nights with Uncle Remus (1883), Uncle Remus and His Friends (1892), Told by Uncle Remus (1905), and others.

Remus, the old storyteller, is wise, perceptive, imaginative, poetic, and gifted with a sly sense of humor. The stories can be read for the larger picture they give of the exploited blacks who invented them. Their hero, Brer Rabbit, as Harris observed, is "the weakest and most harmless of all animals, " but he is "victorious in contests with the bear, the wolf, and the fox." Thus "it is not virtue that triumphs, but helplessness; it is not malice, but mischievousness." However, since Uncle Remus's casual revelations often picture idyllically the lives of slaves and kindly whites on an ante-bellum plantation, these tales cultivated sympathy for Harris's people and his South. Critics believe that Harris's conscious aim was to end sectional antagonism.

In other fictional works Harris enlarged his portrayal of Southerners to include aristocrats, members of the middle class, mountaineers, and poor white farmers. Genre stories appeared in Mingo and Other Sketches (1884), Free Joe (1887), and other collections. There were two novels: Sister Jane, Her Friends and Acquaintances (1896) and Gabriel Tolliver: A Story of Reconstruction (1902). Harris died on July 3, 1908, in Atlanta.

Further Reading

Harris's On the Plantation: A Story of a Georgia Boy's Adventures during the War (1892), gives an autobiographical account of an important period in his life. Julia C. Harris contributed valuable intimate details in Life and Letters of Joel Chandler Harris (1918) and Joel Chandler Harris as Editor and Essayist (1931). Probably the best biographical and critical account is Paul M. Cousins, Joel Chandler Harris (1968). A useful specialized study is Stella B. Brookes, Joel Chandler Harris, Folklorist (1950).

Additional Sources

Bickley, R. Bruce, Joel Chandler Harris, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987. □

Harris, Joel Chandler (1848–1908), born and reared in a small town in Georgia, worked on newspapers in Macon, New Orleans, and Savannah before joining the staff of the Atlanta Constitution, with which he was associated from 1876 until the founding of his own Uncle Remus's Magazine (1907). His first Uncle Remus story appeared in the Constitution in 1879, and the first collection in book form, Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings (1881), was followed by Nights with Uncle Remus (1883), Uncle Remus and His Friends (1892), Mr. Rabbit at Home (1895), The Tar‐Baby and Other Rhymes of Uncle Remus (1904), Uncle Remus and Br'er Rabbit (1906), and other collections, all more exclusively addressed to children than was the first. These works were among the first, and remain the greatest, in the school of black folk literature. Uncle Remus is both typical and strongly individual, and his tales, based on native legends, are told with a simple humor and authentic dialect that is in perfect harmony with the thing said and the way of saying it. The rich plantation background and the elaborate dialogue of the animals are also remarkably fine. Mingo and Other Sketches in Black and White (1884) was the first of a number of volumes in which Harris portrayed Georgia aristocrats, poor whites, and ex‐slaves with fidelity, understanding, and humor. These include two novels, Sister Jane: Her Friends and Acquaintances (1896) and Gabriel Tolliver: A Story of Reconstruction (1902), and such volumes of short stories as Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches (1887), Tales of the Home Folks in Peace and War (1898), and The Making of a Statesman (1902), all of which contribute to Harris's eminence among authors of local‐color fiction.

Joel Chandler Harris 1848–1908, American short-story writer and humorist, b. Eatonton, Ga., considered one of the greatest American regionalist writers. As an apprentice to the editor of the Countryman, a newspaper published on a Southern plantation, Harris gained firsthand knowledge of black slaves and their folklore. His stories and sketches of the South were originally published in the Atlanta Constitution, with which he was associated from 1876 to 1900. Harris's first collection, Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings (1881), brought him immediate fame. Featuring as their narrator a lovable, shrewd former slave, the Uncle Remus stories drew upon African-American folklore and humor and captured the authentic life, character, and dialect of Southern blacks. The demand for his stories and sketches was so great that Harris followed with nine more books in a similar vein, including The Tar Baby (1904) and Uncle Remus and Br'er Rabbit (1906). In other notable works, such as Mingo and Other Sketches in Black and White (1884) and Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches (1887), Harris portrayed with accuracy and insight the aristocrats and poor whites of Georgia.

Bibliography: See his life and letters (ed. by J. C. Harris, 1918); biographies by P. M. Cousins (1968) and R. B. Bickley, Jr. (1987); study by R. B. Bickley, Jr. (1981).

Harris, Joel Chandler (1848–1908), American author of the famous ‘Uncle Remus’ series. These contain a great number of folklore tales, relating to a variety of animals, with the rabbit as hero and the fox next in importance (i.e., Brer Fox and Brer Rabbit) told by a ‘Negro’ to a little boy and interspersed with comments on many other subjects. See also cultural appropriation.

Harris, Joel Chandler (1848–1908) US writer. A journalist in the American South for much of his career, Harris is best known for the Uncle Remus stories, retellings of African-American folk-tales. The character of Brer Rabbit is perhaps his most memorable.