Annotated Bibliography
This annotated bibliography is an extension of an assignemnt from a previous class. It contains several valuable sources related to slavery and slave narratives.
Cumulative Bibliography
North American Slave Narratives. Ed. William L. Andrews. 26 Sept. 2005. U of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 10 Oct. 2005 <http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/>.
According to the university's website, this is "the most complete bibliography of slave narratives ever compiled." The works, spanning 1734-1999, are cataloged alphabetically, chronologically, and by religious content. The listing also includes full text for all cited works. It is searchable and separated into groupings: autobiographies, biographies, and fictionalized narratives.
Annual Bibliography
MLA International Bibliography. EBSCO. Humboldt State U. 10 Oct. 2005 <http://www.epnet.com>.
Available to subscribers of the EBSCOhost research database, this bibliography, published annually by the MLA, contains a comprehensive listing of slave narratives and related works from 1963 to the present. Works are searchable by genre, author, subject, title, and several other identifiers.
Reviews of Research
Davis, Charles T., and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The Slave's Narrative. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1985. 342 pp.
This collection contains reviews of slave narratives by African-American ex-slaves, analytical essays on the validity of narratives as historical sources, and critiques of narratives as literature. All essays include notes and bibliographies. The end of the work contains a selected bibliography and an index of subjects and slave names.
Jackson, Blyden. A History of Afro-American Literature. Vol.1. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1989. 461 pp.
This review focuses on slave narratives and related topics from 1746-1895. Chapters are arranged chronologically. Each article contains critical commentaries on narratives including direct citations and footnotes. The review also contains an index of authors and terms and a bibliographical essay that discusses the sources used.
Periodical
The Journal of Negro History. 86 vols. New York: United Publishing, 1916-2001.
These journals are divided into articles and reviews. Issues include slave narratives, Negro culture, and civil rights. There is a comprehensive index of subjects and authors for volumes one through sixty-eight. HSU owns the eleven most recent volumes and has the earlier editions on microfilm. All volumes are available through JSTOR.
Background Works
Abzug, Robert H. and Stephen E. Maizlish, eds. Race and Slavery in America. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1986. 206 pp.
This collection of critical essays is divided into sections like "Race and Slavery in Antebellum Northern Politics," and "Civil War and Reconstruction." Cultural, intellectual, and religious attitudes are analyzed in relation to slave narratives. The works are indexed by subject and author, and each essay contains a bibliography and notes.
Kolchin, Peter. American Slavery, 1619-1877. New York: Hill and Wang, 1993.
This critical work discusses the factors that allowed slavery to develop during the colonial era. It also goes into great depth regarding the organization, control, and paternalism of slavery. The appendix provides tables with statistical data about slave populations. There is also a bibliographical essay and an index of subjects.
Outstanding General Study
Starling, Marion Wilson. The Slave Narrative: Its Place in American History. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1981. 363 pp.
This study is divided into six chapters which cover special interest topics such as "The Background of the Slave Narrative" and "The Trustworthiness of the Slave Narrative." There is an extensive section of notes as well as bibliographies included. One weakness is the lack of an index.
Outstanding Internet Site
Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938. 23 Mar. 2001. Library of Congress. 10 Oct. 2005 <http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snhome.html>.
This website contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 images collected in the 1930s. The narratives can be browsed by narrator, volume name, or state and are searchable by keywords. Each narrative is included in its entirety as a set of scanned images.
Important Work
Blassingame, John W., ed. Slave Testimony: Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches, Interviews and Autobiographies. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1977.
This immense collection contains 111 letters, 8 speeches, 129 interviews, and 13 autobiographies conducted by journalists, scholars, and government officials between 1827 and 1938, each arranged chronologically in their respective categories. It is indexed by subject and author, and it contains a general bibliography.